Coffee Talk: Or the Adventures of Hawkeye & the Black Widow
by Nienna Nir
Summary: There's an epic tale at SHIELD about the recruitment of Clint Barton by the most legendary agent in SHIELD history, and a story about how the Man Who Never Misses turned around and recruited the Red Room's single greatest spy. A tale told to wide eyed young junior agents, The story of Coulson's Strike Team Delta; Hawkeye & the Black Widow. This is not that story. This one is true.
1. I just might be the lunatic

**1\. I just might be the lunatic you're looking for**

_Author's Note:_

There should have been a Hawkeye & the Black Widow movie. I could point to a lot of reasons why but I'm just going to go with the most obvious one. By the time the original Avengers movie aired in 2012 We'd had a Captain America movie, a Thor movie two Iron Mans and a Hulk. And okay, the Hulk movie was kind of crap, but it existed. It gave us a frame of reference. And then the Avengers came and we were supposed to have feelings about Hawkeye getting his brain zapped. Except there was a major portion of the audience who didn't even really know who he was, and Natasha had only a bit part in Iron Man 2, so we had these two characters who we were supposed to be rooting for whom we barely knew. That's just bad story telling. You can't ask an audience to care about the fate of a character they haven't really met. And because Clint and Natasha had been working for Shield together as Strike Team Delta, and because Phil Coulson should really have had more screen time to make killing off his character hurt more, the logical thing to do would have been to have a Hawkeye & the Black Widow movie.

This is not that movie… except that it kind of is.

Each chapter in this story will be a standalone short, you can read all of them or only some of them, you can skip them if you just don't find them interesting but in the end, you'll have the bones of what would at least be better than no Hawkeye & the Black Widow movie at all.

* * *

Clint's breathing was ragged as he pulled the motorcycle onto the crowded highway. His vision just starting to blur around the edges and his fever spiking. The mission had started to go sideways from the start but from the moment they'd arrived in Manila things had really gone off the rails.

"Hawkeye!" Natasha fairly shouted in his ear, the fingers holding fast to him digging into his ribs. Clint glanced over his shoulder, gritting his teeth as he spotted the motorbike that swerved out from behind a box truck.

"I thought we killed that guy!" He snarled in frustration, jamming the accelerator. He cut down a side street, taking the turn onto an alleyway so close he nearly clipped the dumpster near the corner. The AIM agent on their tail sped up and Clint turned sharp, sliding the bike sideways and picking up speed as he shot into a shipping yard.

"This was not a good idea," Natasha observed as they sped down a loading dock.

"I'm all out of those," Clint replied, his voice slurred. Natasha let out a curse, reaching up and deftly unclipping her helmet. As the AIM agent pulled up closer to them she yanked it off, swinging it into his face. He let out a choked sound as his nose broke and Natasha used the distraction to kick his front axel, sending the bike to shatter into a concrete pile.

"Clint! Stay with me!" She shouted, shaking him. His hands had gone heavy, his head muzzy and slow. There was a wall looming up ahead of them and he should do something about that, really he should. He just really couldn't remember what.

Natasha swore again, her small hand fisting in the front of his jacket. In a show of strength that would have impressed a man twice her size she braced him against her chest, kicking off of the back of the bike and taking him with her. They slid down the rough concrete as the bike slammed into the wall, bursting into flames.

* * *

"OMG, you're kidding me," Darcy stared at him across the table in the farthest corner of the coffee shop, her expression disbelieving.

"No, really," Clint said, leaning back in the bench seat across from her and taking a sip of his coffee. "The stuff those AIM guys shot me up with-"

"Clint you bugnuts," She interrupted him with a groan. "Thats _The Bourne Legacy_."

"It's… wait, what?" He blinked back in her with a confused expression, his coffee cup hovering half way to his mouth. The coffee shop was quiet, the late afternoon traffic on the street removed from the peaceful solitude. A lone barista was carefully cleaning the espresso machine on the other side of the tiny, threadbare shop but otherwise it was empty and Darcy crossed her arms over her chest with a huff, swinging one foot out to lightly kick his shin.

"I've seen it like three times," she replied, rolling her eyes. Clint stared at her with his mouth half open.

"Is there really a scene where-"

"How many times have you been hit in the head that you can't remember your missions from the movies you've seen?" Darcy asked with a hint of worry.

"I've been hit in the head a lot," he admitted grudgingly.

"The deal was for a story, Barton," Darcy said, her eyes narrowing menacingly. "I spot you in the poker game and you pay me back plus interest and the interest was coffee and a spectacularly good Strike Team Delta secret mission story. That wasn't even a good movie!"

"I like those movies."

"You are a horrible liar," she said in exasperation, "How did a guy with no lie game at all end up as a secret agent in the first place?

"_That_ is a dumb story," Clint replied, taking a long gulp of his coffee.

"Well it can't be any worse than your fake action movie story," She shrugged. "Lay it on me."

"Don't suppose any of it's classified now," he sighed. "After the Circus I, well, I took some security jobs."

"Is that code for working for the mob?"

"Some of them were mobsters, yeah," he admitted. He paused shaking his head with a rueful chuckle. "Man I was so young and stupid."

"Now see, _this_ sounds like a half way decent story," Darcy replied, settling into the booth.

The fist that connected with Clint's jaw was, on the whole, a lot bigger and more boulder like than the fists he was used to taking punches from. Your average run of the mill goon tended to have hands like snow shovels but this particular drug trafficker seemed to be setting a high bar for the overall size and mass of his hired muscle. On the up side, every goon beating after this one was going to seem mild by comparison. Clint side stepped the next punch, bringing his knife up to run a glancing blow over Thug One's ribs. He gave himself only a moment to check on Thug Two. Yep, still fighting Stupid Fed.

Clint dodged a lunge, dropping into a crouch and putting a fairly effective bruise on Thug One's kneecap as he tried not to wish a horrible death on Stupid Fed. Clint didn't actually know anything about the guy except that he had good dress sense and horrible situational awareness and that he was currently at least 75% responsible for Clint's latest Thug ass-kicking predicament. Clint would acknowledge 25% responsibility for the fact that a ham fisted goon was trying to rearrange his face, but he felt like that 25% would be moot if Stupid Fed hadn't walked into his trap for the Thug twins in the first place. He should have just shot all three of them.

He was just too nice.

Thug One's fist slammed into his ribs and Clint staggered back landing on his back with a grunt, the wind half knocked out of him. Thug One gave him a feral, toothy grin, one fist grasping the front of Clint's shirt and the other drawing back and aiming for Clint's nose. Well this was going to be horrible.

Thug One jerked, his whole body going rigid. His eyes rolled back in his head and for a moment that seemed an eternity he stood there, frozen with a macabre grimace on his face, then he tipped over sideways, landing face first on the filthy pavement of the alley.

Behind him was Stupid Fed, his tie askew and a science fiction looking gun clutched in his hand. Clint glared at him with narrowed eyes for a long moment as he untangled Thug One's fist from his shirt.

"I don't want to seem ungrateful," he said finally, clambering to his feet and dusting the grit of the alley off his hands. "Because I totally am, but didn't the FBI ever teach you it's rude to poach on another guys' hit?"

"I'm not with the FBI," Stupid Fed replied. Clint looked him over carefully, taking in his four figure suit and silk tie.

"Great, I'm attracting the big crowds now," he said, spitting blood out on the pavement. The Fed held out a plain white handkerchief and Clint's shoulders slumped. He accepted it with a nod of thanks, wiping at his chin.

"Agent Phil Coulson, Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division."

"Ouch, don't hurt yourself," Clint said wincing. "Hawkeye. Great meeting ya, Phil excuse me if I don't hang around to clean up your mess." he gave a sloppy salute before turning on his heel, strolling with a casual pace down the alley as he unslung his bow.

"Hawkeye?!" Coulson skittered after him, his perfectly polished shoes kicking up the loose gravel. "The Amazing Hawkeye?! Clinton Francis Barton?"

"I swear to god, Phil if you call me that again I _will_ shoot you," Hawkeye replied, rounding on him with a scowl. He leveled a threatening finger at Phil as if he were scolding a toddler before letting out a huff and spinning on his heel and continuing down the alley.

"You're number one on our recruitment list!" Coulson declared, undaunted, trailing after him.

"I got a job, thanks." Hawkeye said casually.

"It can't pay that good," Coulson protested. "In the last three years you've been on our radar you haven't taken a single job that could be described as morally suspect."

"SHIELD knows what kind of jobs I'm taking?" Hawkeye asked suspiciously. Clint didn't know a lot about SHIELD, no one did, but the sorts of people he tended to work for and against were exactly the sort that seemed prone to landing on SHIELD's list. What he did know was that overall you were far better off if SHIELD either didn't know about you or didn't care.

"You're number one on our recruitment list," Coulson replied.

"I picked up on that the first time," Hawkeye said with a sigh. He rubbed at his eyes tiredly before looking Coulson over again. He seemed younger than Clint had first suspected. Probably on his first field tour. Clint winced. Sentiment wasn't something he had a lot of room for in his life but somewhere this idiot probably had a mom who was really proud of him and it made Clint at least a little bit sorry for thinking about killing him to save his own ass. He shook his head, turning to continue down the alley "Look man, I live comfortable, I don't look over my shoulder. Much. If someone asks me to shoot something I don't want to shoot I tell them to fuck off. What are you going to offer me that's better than that?"

"We've got really great dental?" Coulson suggested hesitantly. Hawkeye stopped in his tracks, turning back slowly to face him.

"Seriously, Phil, that's what you're leading with? Dental?"

"Pretty sure you lost a tooth back there," Phil said wincing. He let out a sigh, his shoulders slumping as he rubbed his eyes. "I don't know you. I don't know what you need so I don't know what to offer."

"Right now I need an extra large coffee and a cinnamon bun the size of my head but I'm not getting either one," Hawkeye replied.

"I would happily buy you anything you wanted in the nearest bakery if you'd join SHIELD," Phil said.

"That is a desperate act, Phil," Hawkeye observed, once more heading down the alley. "Because I can eat a hell of a lot of pastry. "

"My boss," Coulson let out another sigh as he trailed after Hawkeye. "I was a dumb kid and I poked into things I probably shouldn't have."

"I know what that's like," Hawkeye interjected.

"I probably should have ended up in jail but my boss stuck his neck out for me and recruited me instead," Coulson continued.

"How's that working out for him?" Hawkeye asked.

"Not that well."

"I know what that's like too."

"This mission has gone completely FUBAR," Coulson continued. "I think my boss might actually be dead and now I'm in charge."

"And you think what?" Hawkeye gave him a derisive eyeroll. "You'll recruit me and they won't disappear you?"

"I was thinking at least they wouldn't write on my boss's memorial: he died because he felt sorry for an idiot." Coulson replied miserably.

"Phil, how old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

"How about that," Hawkeye said, a smile curling his lips. "I'll be twenty-two next month."

"You… seem older," Coulson replied hesitantly. Hawkeye let out a soft chuckle.

"You seem a lot younger," he said. "I'm not really in the market for a career change. And since these guys aren't in any shape to answer my questions any more, thanks for that, by the way, I'm going to need to go find me some new guys to put the screws to."

"I couldn't risk you killing them," Coulson said, sounding at least a little apologetic.

"I am seriously questioning why you'd want to recruit me if you think I'm that stupid," Clint replied with a snort, his steps once more heading down the alley. "If I kill them I tip off their boss. If I frame them for grand theft auto the local beat cops will be glad to keep an eye on them for me until I can leave town."

"Would it be rude to ask what you were planning to interrogate them about?" Coulson asked hesitantly.

"Their boss runs a very exclusive call girl service," Clint said, carefully checking over his bow.

"We're aware."

"Are you aware that most of the girls are under age?" Clint asked, turning narrowed eyes on him. Coulson gave him an uncomfortable look in return, honestly this guy had no poker face at all. "One of their father's hired me, Half a mil to get his daughter out. She's been missing since she was seventeen."

"Human trafficking-"

"He already went to the feds, they didn't do anything." Clint interrupted. "They're too busy trying to break up a Heroin ring that's killed fifty people to worry about one runaway. And now if you'll excuse me, you've really fucked my time table. The FBI's going to crack the drug ring wide open any day now and when they do they're going to bust everyone one of those girls over 18 for prostitution."

"The FBI isn't coming," Coulson said.

"Excuse me?"

"SHIELD as jurisdictional priority."

"Good for you," Clint said with a firm nod. "Don't tell me why. I don't want to know."

"Help me get my boss back and I'll help you take down the sex trafficking ring. That's what you were planning on, right?"

"I'm not stupid," Clint declared harshly. He was really staring to not like this guy. "Rescuing one girl is a piece of cake, I'm not going to risk my neck when I'm not getting paid. If their parents want them back I can provide references."

"Right, that's why you pulled the plug on that massage parlor in Reno."

It took every ounce of effort Clint had not to tense up. He slowly turned back, his extraordinary vision taking in every inch of Coulson from his $300 armani shoes to his titanium tie pin with a sense of growing distaste. He couldn't come up with one good reason why anyone should know about what went down in Reno.

"I really don't like you," he said, trying not to grit his teeth.

"You don't have to." Coulson said, resigned. He seemed like the type who'd had enough experience with being not liked to have become used to it. "I need your help, the way I see it we have the same goal."

"And when this is done I walk," Clint gave him a venomous glare. "No questions ask. You let me take the girl home to her family and collect my fee and I'm in the wind."

"We'll want to send someone along to make sure she ends up where she belongs," Coulson replied.

"Fine." Clint snarled.

"Fine."

* * *

"Fury, it was Fury wasn't it?" Darcy asked, grinning gleefully as she bobbed ever so slightly in her seat.

"Oh yeah," Clint chuckled, shaking his head. "In between hating each other Phil and I put together this elaborate plan for busting him out. They had him in the same brothel where they were holding my target. We found him chained up in one of the private rooms."

* * *

The room was swathed in a deep, rich red, velvet drapes covering the windows and red silk curtains surrounding the bed. Red and gold damask wallpaper gave the room a heavy feel that was only compounded by the ornate mahogany furniture. The man who was chained to the red velvet arm chair had a deep cut over one eye, the other blackened. His black linen shirt was torn at the sleeve and he had one leg slung over the arm of the chair, a cuban cigar dangling from his fingers.

"Who's this mother fucker?" He asked, squinting at them through the eye that wasn't swelling shut.

"Sir, this is Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton," Phil said, his gun still at the ready. "Barton, Senior Agent Nick Fury."

"Charmed," Clint said sarcastically as Fury took a long puff on his cigar. His bow was drawn, trained on the hall. "Better break your boss out of those cuffs, Coulson, before I decide I have better places to be."

"This is your idea of handling the situation?" Fury asked derisively as Coulson holstered his sidearm. He held out the hand that wasn't holding the cigar, the leather and brass manacles attached to the foot of the bed didn't give him a lot of range of motion and Clint wasn't inclined to give much thought to their intended purpose, which probably wasn't to incapacitate a federal agent.

"I needed backup, I didn't have time to call it in," Coulson replied, setting to work on the first cuff and glancing at the doorway where Hawkeye was still eyeing the corridor, his bow half drawn and tension curling across his shoulders.

"What's your story, white boy?" Fury asked, tucking the cigar between his teeth with a grimace.

"Oh you know, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girls' old man hires a dumb Carney to get his daughter back from the traffickers who shanghaied her," Clint replied, his tone blasé. "Carney gets his face kicked in because Stupid Fed walked in on his operation. Stupid Fed cons the Carney into busting his boss out of a brothel."

"I hate it when I don't know if I should pat you on the back or tear you a new ass," Fury stated, turning his narrowed eye on Phil as he took a long draw on his cigar. The lock clicked and Coulson looked up at him with a flinch before tackling the second cuff. "Do I have to put you in for a recruiting bonus?"

"I did my best," Phil replied.

"If that's your best, Coulson, I'd hate to see you on a bad day," Clint huffed.

"How many kids are they holding here?" Fury asked, toying with the cigar with his free hand now.

"About eight teenagers, another three or four adult females," Clint replied, his eye sweeping the hall.

"So a dozen kids," Fury nodded, Clint let his eyes dart in his direction for only a fraction of a second. "We got a plan for getting them out?" The second cuff snapped open and he stood to his feet, rubbing his wrist.

"Not one that secures the 084," Phil admitted.

"Don't tell me what that is," Clint said quickly. "On the up side the plan involves a shit ton of C4 and that always makes my day brighter."

"The thermal flash'll do that," Fury agreed drily. "Did one of you assholes remember to bring me a gun?" Clint never took his eyes from the hall but he released the tension on his bow and swiftly unholstered the gun at his hip, holding it out by the barrel. Fury's hand closed around the grip and in the next moment Clint had bis bow drawn again.

"I'm not putting you out?" Fury asked cautiously.

"I got more," Clint replied.

"So many more," Phil said with a sigh.

"Son, I don't say this lightly," Fury edged up into the doorway, checking the sight lines. "But when we get out of here, I need to have a long conversation with you about how much of my budget I'm going to need to lay out to get you batting for our team."

"Sorry to disappoint, coach, I'm strictly free agent," Clint replied, easing out into the corridor.

"He's got a weakness for bakery," Coulson said, bringing up the rear. There were footsteps on the stairs and Clint let his arrow fly at the sound of raised voices, another arrow following the first as shots rang out. He ducked into the nearest doorway as Fury took the one across from him and Coulson took cover beside him.

"If we get out of this alive," Clint said, his voice dripping venom. "I'm going to shoot you."

"Tell Fury it's part of the price of signing on and he'll probably buy you the bullets," Coulson replied.

"And what, Fury let you shoot Phil in exchange for signing up with SHIELD?" Darcy asked with a mystified expression.

"Well, no, I dislocated my shoulder taking out some of the goons so I was wasted on pain killers when Fury finally made his sales pitch," Clint admitted.

"You are _really_ interesting on pain killers," Darcy said.

"He brought me a cake," Clint added.

"That is so low," she shook her head slowly. "Even for Fury that, that is exceptionally amoral."

"Cake and narcotics, I didn't stand a chance," Clint agreed.

* * *

Friday night I crashed your party  
Saturday I said I'm sorry  
Sunday came and trashed me out again  
I was only having fun  
Wasn't hurting any one  
And we all enjoyed the weekend for a change  
I've been stranded in the combat zone  
I walked through Bedford Stuy alone  
Even rode my motorcycle in the rain  
And you told me not to drive  
But I made it home alive  
So you said that only proves that I'm insane

Billy Joel - You May Be Right

Part of the Series "Coulson Lives but The Avengers Might Be the Death of Him" See author profile for more stories.


	2. Through the circle, fast and slow

**2\. Through the circle, fast and slow**

"Well," Clint stirred sugar into his fresh cup of coffee. "I could tell you about my first long term undercover mission, that one was crazy."

"Monty Python crazy or Saw crazy?" Darcy asked.

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other," Clint replied, making a face. "I was sent in to track down an 0-8-4 in Baghdad and I had to go undercover as an Army Staff Sergeant."

"You?" she gave him a face that was part euphoria and part disbelief.

"Yeah, I know," he nodded in agreement. "Anyway, my cover put me in charge of a three man bomb disposal team and basically we wandered around the desert looking for IED's to disable. Now these guys they have me in charge of are lifers and they're good at what they do. And right away, they don't like me, and it doesn't help that, because I'm looking for tech that's not your run of the mill IED, they really don't like some of my methods. We had kind of a close call and they go to their CO, but the CO knows who I am and why I'm really there so he doesn't do anything about it. So one day we're coming back to base and there's a car by the side of the road… and why are you looking at me like that?"

"Clint, you're describing The Hurt Locker," She said with a frown.

"Okay," he blinked slowly, his brow furrowing.

"You're pissing me off," Darcy observed, though she didn't sound as put out as she might have.

"I do that," he said, resigned.

"Is that how Phil kept from killing you when you first signed on?" She asked, stifling a snicker. "They just sent you out on your own so no one had to deal with you?"

"Oh, hell no," Clint shook his head, chuckling. "Phil wasn't even my SO at first."

"Really?"

"He was only level 5 at the time," Clint said. "He got the recruitment bonus for signing me up which gave us both an interesting reputation, let me tell you. I did a month of procedural certifications and then they put me with this senior field agent named Phillips. Man, that guy was a first class roll of toilet paper. We locked horns from day one. We'd just wrapped up our fourth op, which went completely sideways because he wasn't paying attention, and he stormed into Fury's office in a rage."

* * *

"He's an insubordinate little ass!"

"It's a really spectacular ass though," Agent Melinda May muttered under her breath so soft that only Phil could hear. He very deliberately shifted his shoulders, chewing on his tongue to keep from laughing. Standing in Fury's office and not laughing was a skill set Phil had had a lot of experience perfecting.

"Phillips," Nick Fury said, looking decidedly irritated. "I'm going to say this again and this time I want you to hear all the words in the sentence in the correct order; Specialists are not regular Agents, they are not regular Agents for a reason. They specialize in things, and sometimes those things are shooting targets from a mile out, and sometimes those things are being an irritating little shit and both of those skills have value. It's your job to make sure the Specialist gets the job done, how they do it is not something that SHIELD gives a good god damn about."

"You can deny my transfer," Phillips snapped. "And you can send me out in the field with that idiot. But you can't force me to be his SO." He tossed a handful of forms onto Fury's desk.

"Give your charity case to someone more desperate, I'm out." Phillips turned on his heel, storming out of the office and slamming the door behind him. Goose, who had been napping in his cat bed in the corner, looked up with a disapproving frown.

"What a little bitch," Sr. Agent Dorothea Triplett said with a sigh as she leaned comfortably back into the sofa along the wall. "His granddaddy would bend him over his knee if he was still alive."

"That apple sure rolled away from the tree," Fury nodded in agreement, rubbing his eyes. Goose leapt onto the desk, swiping at the pile of paperwork as if it had personally offended him and Fury reached out to scratch his ears. Agent Triplett tilted her head, an almost maternal expression lighting on her face.

"So how's that circus sniper working out for you, Nick?" she asked sweetly. Fury threw her a bitter look, his eyes narrowed. Senior Agent Triplett was absolutely the only person on the planet who got away with calling him Nick. The pool had odds in favor that Fury's mother called him Nick, but Phil wasn't taking that action based on the way Fury glared at Triplett every time she said his name.

"I have not forgot about the two of you," Fury stated, leveling a warning finger at Melinda and Phil. "So don't think I'm finished with you." both of them pasted on their most innocent expressions as Fury turned back to the Senior Agent.

"What do you want me to say?" He snapped. "That you were right?"

"Not every great talent belongs in SHIELD," she said gently. "Barton's checkered past aside, he seems like a good kid. But maybe your hawk's been untethered too long to take to a leash."

"Aw, shit," Melinda grumbled, keeping her voice at a bare whisper. "Hartley's going to win the damn pool"

"They're not going to retire Barton," Phil hissed back, gritting his teeth. "Chet's a lousy handler, even you say so."

"Well if you think I'm saying so to Fury you've got another thing coming," She murmured back. "I'm not sticking my neck out for Barton, I like my job, I'm in enough trouble already for that stupid stunt you pulled. I mean, we'd all have died if you hadn't pulled it, and it was slightly less stupid than the one Barton pulled, but yeah, not losing my job for either of you."

"It's not my fault and it's not Barton's either." Phil insisted. "And neither one of us would have had to do something stupid to keep us all alive if Barton just had an SO who would listen to him when he says something's off."

"Too bad you're not level six," She huffed. "No, no Phil, do not. You and your superhero fetish. Stay out of it!"

"You're probably right," Fury said, resigned.

"I usually am," Triplett replied with a soft smile.

"Just, in light of everything I was hoping," His voice trailed off and he looked at Goose who was very meticulously washing between his toes.

"I'll take on Barton," Phil blurted before he could stop himself. He shifted away quickly so May couldn't trod on his foot. Fury turned to stare at him blankly.

"You're right ma'am," Phil continued, squaring his shoulders. "Hawkeye's never going to take to being tethered. I used to go Hawking with my grandfather in Wisconsin. The best hawk he had, my grandfather never tied her down, she came every time he called. She trusted him, because he trusted her."

"I want you to know how pissed at you I am right now," Fury stated, leveling a finger in Phil's direction. "And I'm not likely to be un-pissed any time in your near future."

"Coulson, isn't it?" Agent Triplett asked with a considering gaze

"No," Fury stated, his eyes narrowing menacingly at her. They stared each other down for a long moment until finally Fury let out a string of expletives under his breath.

"Don't think this makes up for that shit you pulled," Fury snapped, turning back on Phil once more. "I'm still considering sending you to McMurdo. You or your bird on a wire piss me off again and I'm solving my problems by shipping you both there."

"Absolutely sir," Phil replied, but he was barely stifling a grin.

"Get the hell out of my office!" Fury snapped. Phil turned on his heel heading for the door with Melinda close behind. "And go collect Barton, you'll have your level 6 paperwork the end of the day!"

"Hawking?" Melinda asked, trailing after him with her most incredulous expression. "Really?"

"I thought it played well," Phil replied, straightening his spine and adjusting his tie as they boarded the lift.

"Your grandfather is an actuary," May said, leaning back against the wall as Phil punched the button for the residential level. "He's never even seen the outdoors."

"Just because his career-"

"I've met him he's the most sublimely boring person who's ever lived," Melinda interrupted him. "And that's not an insult, I want you to know how relaxing I find that man. It's rare I can spend time with someone and not keep my guard up. Your grandfather has all the aggressive tendencies of a warm blanket."

"Well what Fury doesn't know won't hurt me," Phil replied, heading purposefully down the hall as soon as the doors opened.

"Fury's met your grandfather too," she said. Phil paused his steps, turning to look at her.

"When?"

"At academy graduation," Melinda replied, her smile mocking. Phil frowned.

"I sort of forgot granddad was there," he admitted, continuing down the corridor and turning left at the last hallway.

"That's because he's as riveting as cold toast," she said.

"Well Fury didn't call me on it," Phil pointed out. "He probably forgot my grandfather was there too."

"This is a fiasco I'm going to miss you so much when you're gone," May stated practically. "Not so much that I won't be glad that I'm off the hook for all your harebrained schemes. But I am going to miss you. On the plus side I'll probably never be in trouble again, so there's that to look forward to."

"You keep telling yourself that," he gave her a smile as they continued down the hall, holding out his hand. "I did tell you he wasn't going to reprimand us."

"You are a weasel and an ass," Melinda replied, but she fished a note out of her pocket, slapping it in his palm.

"It's a great ass though," Phil said.

"Keep dreaming, Phil." She followed him to the very end of the hall, past the utility room to a door marked "Laundry/Vending" and Phil turned narrowed eyes on her as his hand grasped hold of the door latch.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Oh I wouldn't miss this," Melinda replied with a feral grin. "I can't wait to find out how Barton takes it when you tell him you used him to get promoted to level 6." She leaned into the wall beside the door, an expectant look on her face as Phil drew in a breath as if to say something nasty but she waved him on, folding her arms over her chest with smug satisfaction. He frowned, opening the door and squaring his shoulders just a fraction later than he probably should have.

"Oh hey, Coulson," Hawkeye didn't turn away from the pinball machine shoved into the corner of the tiny room between the beat up washer and dryer and the laundry sink, but that didn't seem to deter him from seeing over his shoulder. There was a duffel bag at his feet, one purple shirt bulging out from the zipper. "Fury send you to escort your bad idea off the grounds?"

The pinball machine had turned up in the laundry and vending room about two weeks after Barton had, no one was entirely sure how it had arrived completely under the radar along with a large, battered sofa that was some horrific shade between lilac and cornflower and an impressively large TV that was now balanced on top of the two vending machines near the door. SHIELD had a very reliable laundry service, but the New York offices had existed for years before that, years when most of the field staff had used the ancient and rusting machines in the corner of the laundry and vending room to wash the blood and hazardous chemicals out of their underwear on a regular basis. Phil didn't like to think about what was probably incubating in that washing machine, just waiting for sentience and it's opportunity to take over the whole agency. He was almost equally suspicious of the vending machines, in no small part because of the blearily glowing buttons marked "Tab" and "Slice". Phil very carefully edged his way around the battered sofa so that he was sure he was in Barton's line of sight but Barton didn't turn. The pinball machine gave off the unmistakable trill of Jackpot.

"Phillips resigned as your SO," Phil said, wincing at how the words sounded.

"Figured that," Barton replied.

"I," Phil drew in another unsteady breath. "offered to replace him." Hawkeye didn't tense, not ever, but a stillness came over him, the same one Phil had seen when the archer would draw back his bow, sighting a target and waiting, holding until the perfect moment.

"I underestimated you, Coulson," Barton said his expression unperturbed. "I didn't honestly think you were cut-throat enough for this line of work. Congratulations on your promotion. Sir."

"It's not like that," Phil insisted, throwing caution to the wind and taking a step closer to the washing machine so that Barton would have a clear view of his face. "You're good, you could be one of the best. But you're never going to be that with Chet Phillips in your ear. He's got no improvisational skills and he likes the regs too much." Hawkeye blinked twice before turning his head to stare at Coulson blankly.

"What?" Phil asked cautiously.

"You just described yourself," Barton replied. Across the room May let out a snort that she muffled in her fist when Phil turned his ice cold glare on her.

"But hey!" Hawkeye said, cheerfully sweeping his duffle off the floor and hoisting it over his shoulder. "I still got a bunk and those three squares a day for at least a little while longer, so bonus there." He dug two quarters out of his pocket and tossed them, one after the other at the vending machine. The machine clinked as the quarters fell into the coin slot and Barton swept a rubber ball out of the soap dish at the laundry sink, heaving it at the buttons. The vending machine rattled as Barton crossed the room and he retrieved his RC Cola.

"I'm going to go see if that Great Dental can't fix the tooth I just broke," Barton added, popping his soda with a challenging glare. "See you around. Sir."

"Thanks for the save out there, Hawkeye," Melinda said with a genuine smile as he passed her.

"Oh," Barton paused, ducking his head as if he were embarrassed. "Sure, any time May." He scuttled out the door and she watched him go for a long moment.

"Are you, like, trying to build some kind of rapport with him by being honest or are you just that stupid?" She finally asked, grinning merrily. Phil gritted his teeth, he found that look really irritating and sometimes he wished she'd just stop.

"He has to trust me," Phil snapped.

"He has to trust the guy who just used him to worm his way into a promotion?" May rolled her eyes. "I'm honestly beginning to wonder why _I_ trust you."

"Okay you know that's not what happened!" Phil rounded on her angrily. "I just hung my whole career on this, you think Fury was joking about McMurdo? Because I don't! If I'm lucky I'm going to be an eskimo if this goes south. _If_ I'm lucky."

"You have zero luck." May replied, her brow furrowed in a rarely serious expression. "And you know what? Barton doesn't have any either. In fact he has negative luck. I think he spit on a gypsy fortune teller while he was in the circus. And now the two of you are the flavor of the month."

"He really is amazing," Phil said in a small voice. "Really. He is Melinda, you didn't see it. He jumped off a building and he… We'd both be dead if he hadn't and it's like he didn't even think about the fact that he was risking his life. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen and he deserves to be here. He deserves to be one of the best we have. He doesn't deserve to be passed over because nobody realizes what he can be."

"Oh my god you and your comic book heroes." May groaned, falling over onto the sofa and splaying out all her limbs.

"Why are we even friends?" Phil demanded with a frown.

"We're friends because we were the two biggest misfits in proby training," she replied, digging around under the sofa cushions with one hand until she found the remote. She hit the button and the TV slowly flickered to life as she began surfing through a truly ridiculous number of channels that were definitely not part of the the standard cable package in the regular staff rec rooms.

"Barton doesn't have a Melinda May to back him up," Phil pointed out as she settled in to watch the _Joy Luck Club_ on Showtime.

"You're right; Why are we friends?" She asked. Phil gritted his teeth, storming out of the laundry room and into the hall, his steps skidding to a halt just outside the door where Goose was sitting in the middle of the corridor, his tail twitching and his eyes narrowed in Phil's direction. Phil glanced around cautiously a moment but as always the corridor was empty.

"It's not my fault your cat-dad almost fired Hawkeye," he hissed quietly at the… whatever it was. Phil wasn't cleared to know, he just knew, despite appearances, it wasn't a cat. Goose considered him a moment longer before stretching with a bored yawn and padding regally away in the direction of Fury's office.

"I am in so much trouble," Phil sighed.

* * *

"Wait, wait," Darcy held up one hand, her grin unnaturally wide. "I just need a moment to process this. Agent ruthlessly used you to get a promotion."

"In his defense, he was almost as young and dumb as I was at the time," Clint replied.

"This is a game changer," she declared, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling. "Hawkeye and Agent Coulson: certified failures at Responsible Adulting."

"Adult is not a verb," Clint insisted, shaking his head. "and everyone's a hot mess in their twenties."

"This puts the interest rate on my student loans in an all new perspective."

"I thought Tony paid off your student loans," he replied with a frown.

"Oh he did," Darcy nodded. "but then he bitched for over a week about my interest rate and I still kind of feel bad about it." Clint shook his head.

"Sometimes you really do remind me of Phil," he said.

"Really?" she asked, her face lighting up. She paused, her brow furrowing. "Is that an insult or a compliment?"

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other."

"So how long did you two hate each other?" she asked, using a spoon to eat the foam off the top of her latte.

"About another six months," Clint replied with a shrug. "It was so insane. In the field we were a perfect team. We got the job done, no one died, May's injury rate went way down, after our fifth mission all three of us were fast tracking to the senior level. Out of the field it was a train wreck. Phil kept trying to get me on board with his team bonding routine, movies and take out, beer and burgers, that kind of thing."

"And you weren't having any of that?"

"With a big side of hell no," he nodded.

* * *

"Agents," the director of SHIELD stood behind her desk, her arms crossed over her chest. She turned to them, her face unreadable. "job well done."

"Thank you, Director Carter," Phil replied, tamping down on his smile. Melinda was not nearly so subtle as she stood beside him with her biggest smarmy grin. In the farthest corner of the room Barton only nodded his head in acknowledgment and Phil shot him a glare over his shoulder.

"It's nice to see the collateral damage at a minimum," Fury added, perusing the after action reports as he sprawled on Director Carter's sofa.

"We do our best," May replied. Phil elbowed her gently but Carter only ducked her head to mask her smile.

"I'm putting in a commendation for all three of you," she continued. "and a promotion for you, Agent Barton, to level three."

"Ma'am" Clint didn't shift from his corner and Phil gritted his teeth.

"I'd congratulate you, Barton," May said, with a teasing smile. "But this just means they'll be sending us out after increasingly weirder shit."

"No doubt," Director Carter agreed. "But before you all become intimately familiar with how appallingly bizarre the world can be, you're all on three days mandatory stand down. Get some rest, order take out, try not to think about work." The last one she directed at Phil and his cheeks colored slightly as May gave a nod and headed for the door while Barton peeled himself off the wall and loped after her. Phil shot him another glare and Clint flipped him off in reply, timing it so that neither Fury or the Director would see. He gritted his teeth as he turned the corner, glancing over toward the windows across from the reception desk that reflected the interior of the Director's office

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Coulson was saying. Clint froze, dropping into a crouch against the wall. He shifted back on his heels a few inches, angling for a better view of the reflection in the window. "He's a consummate professional in the field, the best I've ever worked with. I have no idea why he acts like that on base." Clint's lips turned up in a snarl. Not for the first time he wondered why he kept hanging on to this job.

"Well, Agent Coulson, it just so happens that I do," Director Carter replied. Clint frowned, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. "He doesn't have a clear line of sight if he's standing in front of my desk."

"Ma'am?" Phil blinked at her blankly a long moment.

"It's kind of sweet, when you think about it." Director Carter continued, turning to Fury. "It's always the same spot, the only one in my office that not only covers all the sight lines but gives you the option to shield my desk."

"Deputy Director Keller isn't as big a fan of him as you are," Fury pointed out without looking up. "It'd be a shame if he had to take over for you."

"He does lack a sense of humor," Carter admitted before turning back to Phil. "As someone with a great deal of experience handling assets who rely extensively on unconventional skill sets, I'd suggest that you shift your focus to the end results and accept that the road to success might at times be rocky."

"Are we talking about Captain America?" Phil asked a bit breathlessly. Director Carter's expression didn't change but Fury very minutely shook his head in warning.

"People with exceptional skills generally acquire them from exceptional life experiences," Director Carter continued, eying Phil. "Exceptional people as young as Agent Barton rarely come by those skills voluntarily. If you want to know why he does the things he does you're either going to have to open your mind to seeing things through his eyes or rely on him to tell you, and both of those things require a certain measure of trust."

"I've tried," Phil said, sounding a little desperate. Clint had a momentary spike of satisfaction at that. "He's closed off, unresponsive, I don't know what else I'm supposed to do." Director Carter leaned into her desk on the palms of both hands.

"Try harder," she replied. She gave him a considering look before leaning back and settling into her desk chair. "Or don't. Resign yourself to the fact that you can't understand him and continue your exemplarily field record knowing that if you continue to work this well together you'll eventually both get yourselves promoted to level seven." Phil gave her a nod and turned to head for the door, he stopped half way there, turning back.

"Ma'am?" he asked cautiously. "Which would you do?"

"Both," Fury replied before she could answer. Carter gave a soft smile but didn't contradict him.

* * *

"Peggy Carter liked you," Darcy sing-songed, grinning at him. Clint smiled back, the faintest blush tinging his ears.

"She was amazing," he replied. "Best director SHIELD ever had. Even Fury thinks so."

"I thought she would have retired by the time you came along," Darcy observed. "What was she? Seventy something?"

"She retired the next year, she was seventy-seven," Clint replied, taking a sip of his coffee. "She was still field fit too. I didn't know it at the time but she only quit because her memory was starting to go a little, she was worried something vital would slip her mind and agents would get hurt. If it hadn't been for that she probably would have stayed on until she was eighty."

"That is so badass," Darcy said. Clint nodded in agreement. "So what did Phil do with that bit of advice?"

"No idea," Clint shrugged. "I was so pissed I spent the next three months hiding from him when we weren't actually working."

"Way to deal with your issues there, Barton," she said with a smirk.

"Hey no one ever accused me of being well adjusted."

* * *

Someone told me long ago  
There's a calm before the storm  
I know it's been comin' for some time  
When it's over so they say  
It'll rain a sunny day  
I know shinin' down like water

John Cameron Fogerty - Have You Ever Seen the Rain


	3. Hanging on the promises in songs

**3\. Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday**

"I got to tell you," Darcy said, rubbing her eyes. "I am having a really hard time figuring out how the pair of you didn't kill each other."

"Yeah, well it was kind of a close shave there," Clint admitted.

"Oh! Oh!" Her eyes lit up and she leaned into the table with a grin. "Did you finally shoot him?"

"What? No!" Clint's face crumpled in a frown

"He shot you?" She suggested, the manic brightness only increasing.

"What is with that stupid rumor?" Clint demanded, dragging both hands over his face. "There was no shooting."

"That's so disappointing," Darcy huffed, slumping back in the bench seat and folding her arms over her chest with a sulking pout.

"It was an accident," Clint muttered into his coffee.

"What?"

"What?" He asked, puzzled.

"This is the most confusing coffee date I've ever been on," Darcy sighed, slumping into the table and letting her forehead rest on her folded arms.

"For both of us," Clint agreed. He seemed to think about that a moment. "Well, maybe second most confusing." He took a sip of his coffee.

"Possibly third," he said.

"What was number one?" Darcy asked with a frown, turning her head to look up at him.

"It's complicated," Clint shrugged. She gave him a wave of her hand as if to say continue. "Turns out May was right about level three. The missions kept getting weirder, Phil was my SO so I always went out with him, sometimes with May, sometimes with bigger teams. Couple of weeks after I got promoted this suspicious death came through analysis, a girl froze to death in the wilderness in Wyoming. Real sad but it didn't seem like it was our type of thing. Couple weeks after that two more girls went missing in the same town, and then another girl, froze to death, same as the first girl."

"Oh my god."

"Fury scrambled a team," he nodded in agreement at the sentiment. "Two hours after they found the girl we were in Wyoming in the middle of winter. We didn't have any leads, and there's another snow storm rolling in. We couldn't be in a worse scenario, so I tell Fury I can track her back to where she started her hike through nowhere but I have to do it quick before the snow covers everything. So there I am with Phil and three Level Fives following me through the snow while Fury took May and the rest of the team into town to interview the families."

"What did you find?" Darcy asked with a grimace.

"You know what they say, if it exists some weird super-villain will try to experiment on it."

"Come on, Barton, one foot in front of the other," Coulson said, plodding through snow that was already knee deep and still falling, the early evening so dark is was already difficult to see.

"Only got one working one," Clint mumbled, crippling along, half draped over Coulson's shoulder.

"Are you sure they didn't shoot you?" Phil asked his jaw ticking in frustration as he struggled under Clint's weight.

"Naw's just a fracture," Clint replied. His eyelids had been growing heavy since they'd made a break from the rundown logging camp tucked away in the forest near the mountains. What they'd first thought was an abandoned warehouse converted into a temporary hunting shelter turned out to be sheltering something a lot more dangerous and they'd lost the rest of their team and their transport in the process. "Try m' radio again."

"Coulson to Fury," Phil paused his lurching march to raise the radio to his ear but the only reply was static. He stowed the radio, pulling out his phone. "I think the storm's affecting our range. Still no cell service either. We have to keep going." He glared at the phone as if it had personally offended him. He missed his old satellite phone, those things almost always worked even if they did weigh more than a small dog.

"I don't think I'm going to make it all the way to town on one leg." Clint shook his head. "The temp's already dropping and the wind's picking up, you've only got a few more hours out here too."

"It's only six miles," Phil snapped angrily.

"Nope, I'm toast," Clint let go of Coulson's shoulder, falling over in the snow in a heap.

"Barton!"

"In my pack," Clint said, shrugging off one of the straps, his movements sloppy as if he were drunk. "Top front pocket there's a thing, med kit's in th' second pocket." Coulson knelt beside him in the snow, rummaging through the pack until he pulled out a bundle of white and mylar nylon.

"What is this?" he asked with a frown. Clint made a motion as if he were throwing a frisbee and Coulson copied it, blinking a bit stupidly when the bundle unrolled into a pop-up snow shelter. "Have you been buying beers for R&D again?"

"They need someone to test their crazy ass ideas," Clint replied, dragging himself to the opening in the shelter and rolling inside with a pained grunt. "Take my radio, you'll move twice as fast on your own."

"I can't leave you out here without-"

"Coulson, they took out three of our best agents and they've still got two kids," Clint cut him off, digging through the med kit until he found an injector pen. He closed one eye, staring at the label for a long moment before taking a deep breath and jamming it into his leg with a pained hiss. "You cannot carry my heavy ass six miles through the snow in under three hours. If you don't leave me here we're both going to be dead of exposure and if you don't make it back those girls are as good as finished, we're the only ones who know where they are. If they're going to have any chance at all Fury's going to have to go in for them as soon as the storm clears. The both of us dying out here doesn't help anyone."

"I should be in radio range in under two hours," Coulson insisted, rummaging through Barton's pack until he found the thermal blanket. "I'll call in the intel, get transport, and come right back for you. Two hours out, an hour back. Three hours, three and a half tops, you can survive that long in the shelter. Hang on to what's left of my radio, it might get a signal out once the storm starts to clear." Clint nodded slowly.

"Right," he said, wrapping the blanket around himself and propping his head on his pack. "Do me a favor? When you talk to Fury tell him he's a lying bastard."

"Not that you're wrong, but is there a reason why?" Phil asked cautiously.

"He'll know why," Clint replied, closing his eyes.

"Barton, I'm coming back, you have my word."

"Right," Clint nodded again. "You better get going, Don't mind me, I'm going to put my feet up, play some canasta."

"Three hours," Phil insisted, leaning back on his heels. Clint only nodded, reaching out to zip the shelter shut against the wind.

"He left you in a snow drift," Darcy said with a disapproving frown.

"It was a nice snowdrift," Clint replied.

"With minimal shelter and no radio?"

"I had half a radio," Clint said with a shrug. "Have you ever tried to hike through the snow with a fractured tibia?"

"I'm having some really conflicting feelings and I'm not sure you shouldn't have asked Fury to buy you those bullets."

"Sometimes doing the right thing means making a shit call," Clint said taking a long gulp of his coffee. "I didn't think I could live with it if we didn't rescue those girls."

"I'm not sure how you lived anyway."

"It was close. The storm was so bad Phil had to hike five and a half miles before he could get a signal through, but by then he was hypothermic, called in the intel and passed right out. Woke up three hours later."

"Damn."

* * *

"I'm good, sir," Phil stumbled out of the treatment room in pursuit of his field commander on wobbly legs, one hand gripping the wall. "I'm drugged to the gills but I'm good." Fury turned back, eying him reproachfully. The tiny rural hospital wasn't much larger than a walk in clinic and the on-duty physician looked to be pressing seventy. The nurse, who was bustling around at a speed Phil frankly found terrifying was easily five years older. Other than the orderly asleep in a plastic chair in the corner there were no other staff. The nurse stopped at Coulson's side on her way from one thing to something else and grabbed hold of his face shining her pen light in his eyes.

"The meds make him compulsively honest," May explained as the nurse gave a satisfied nod and tottered speedily off to her next task. "Don't let him interrogate anyone." Phil glared at her, largely on principle.

"Do we have some reason to believe Barton is still alive out there?" Fury demanded, his shoulders rigid with anger. Fury hated losing agents. "Has he called in?"

"I have his radio," Phil admitted. "Mine was damaged, I left it with him but I don't think he can get a signal all the way here."

"So the answer is no," Fury said harshly. "I'm down four agents on this op."

"Three," Phil interrupted him. "Barton's not dead."

"Four," Fury spat back at him. "Because you left your specialist in a snow bank in Wyoming with minimal shelter and that is not on me. You're asking me to send you and whatever other idiot you can con out into a blizzard in the middle of the night to pick up a damn popsicle!"

"I kind of resent that," May muttered under her breath.

"I promised him I'd come back for him."

"Well you broke your word then!" Fury replied. "And I should bust your ass back down to probie just because I have to write four condolence letters and one of them is to a jackass serving three to five in Folsom!"

"Did… did Barton know his brother…"

"Damned if I know!" Fury scowled. "You were his SO! God damnit Coulson, I thought you were better than this!"

"You're saying I shouldn't have left him," Phil said, his jaw tight.

"I'm saying that when you left him you should have realized that you weren't going back for him," Fury replied. "Sometimes you have to make that call, you have to put the mission first. But if you're not prepared to live with that then you don't leave a man behind. You make the call and you accept that sometimes life is shit. You had to choose between the Asset and the Mission and you chose the Mission, end of story. I'm not losing anyone else just because you've got a damn kid's death on your conscience. Now get your ass back in bed before you fucking fall down!" he spun on his foot, stalking toward the door as May grabbed Phil's arm.

"He told me to tell you you're a lying bastard!" Coulson called after him. Fury's steps halted and Phil winced as Melinda's fingers dug into his arms like a vice. He glanced at her to find her wide eyed and unnaturally still.

"And that's exactly why you're on my shit list," Fury said coldly. "Because you just lost me the smartest specialist I had." Without another word he stormed out of the Hospital, stomping through the still falling snow to the Sheriff's office a handful of yards away.

"I promised," Phil said, his voice shaking.

"I'm sure Barton believed that," May quipped, tugging on his arm to get him moving. Phil turned on her with a gimlet glare. "What are you mad at me for? I'm the one that's spent the last six months listening to the two of you snip at each other constantly. It's given me a damn headache. And unlike you, I actually liked Barton."

"Stop talking like he's dead."

"He's been out in a blizzard for nearly eight hours!" she replied. "Even Hawkeye's not that tough." Phil's shoulder's rolled in an angry huff and he tugged his arm free from her grasp, taking a handful of steps before sinking tiredly down into one of the plastic chairs clustered around the small hospital.

"Do you know, Steve Rogers didn't keep a journal." he said.

"Oh here we go," Melinda groaned, leaning into the counter of the nurse's station.

"He didn't have any family left by the war so he didn't have anyone to write home to either."

"Sounds like Barton," she observed. "No wonder you keep obsessing about him." Phil shot her a cold look.

"He wrote one letter though, right after Barnes died Rogers wrote to Barnes's kid sister."

"How do you know this?"

"SHIELD has the original draft in the archives. In the letter he told her that he'd wanted to go back and look, to at least bring Barnes body home but the snow was too deep and they couldn't make it into the ravine. It's four pages of how sorry he is, how ashamed he was he let them down. He'd pulled Barnes and 400 men out of a Hydra camp just a couple of years before, everything he did and the only thing he could focus on was the one he couldn't go back for."

"Phil"

"I've been letting Barton down since I met him," he said. "I wasn't listening to what Director Carter tried to tell me. I was so focused on getting Barton to trust me, I didn't think about showing him that I trusted him. That I believed in him. He's alive out there, I _know_ he is. I have to go get him."

"Sure, why not, I'd love to get fired and black-balled from every intelligence agency on the planet," Melinda replied, rolling her eyes. "You have a concussion and your toes are an interesting shade of blue but hey, lets slap on the snow shoes and hike into a blizzard."

"We need to steal a jeep."

"I hate you."

"Why was Fury a lying bastard?" Darcy asked curiously.

"Oh, he told me if I signed on with SHIELD I'd never be left out in the cold again," Clint replied, his mouth twisting up in a wry grin as Darcy laughed. She tipped over into the bench seat, only her shoulder visible as she cackled. Across the coffee shop the barista looked up from where she was cleaning the pastry case but didn't seem terribly interested.

"Phil riding in to save you on a white horse though," Darcy said, shaking her head as she finally pulled herself upright. "That's heroic."

"Well it would have been," Clint agreed. "If it wasn't on an ugly yellow snowmobile he stole from the hospital." Darcy let out another snort of laughter.

"And if he had actually got to do any rescuing," Clint added as an afterthought.

"Oh no."

"Oh yeah."

* * *

"Well I guess we have an answer to the question: Why was there no sign of a barracks at the Evil Lair Warehouse?" Phil let out a breath that was nearly a sigh, lowering his binoculars.

"Why, why does this shit always happen with you?" May demanded from her spot crouched in the snow beside him.

"This is my fault?" Phil demanded, glaring at her. "Aerial surveillance cleared this area days ago. I have no idea why there's a half dozen mobile homes out here in the middle of nowhere!" But there they were, a nondescript cluster of hastily installed single wide trailers, shabby industrial front stoops connected to each of them. They were little more than serviceable shelter from the blistering cold, each of them eerily quiet, a bare half mile from the logging camp that held the missing girls and practically right beneath the ridge where Phil had left Barton more than nine hours ago.

The snow had finally started to let up a little and patches of inky star strew sky bled through slate colored clouds, the full moon bright enough to illuminate their path even this late. They'd left the ancient and dilapidated snowmobile, the word Ambulance inked sloppily on the sled it was dragging, sheltered along the tree line. Phil was feeling a profound sense of relief that he'd decided to scout the hillside before trying to drive it any farther or they likely would have driven right into the middle of the encampment.

"Maybe they're hunting cabins." May suggested. Phil shot her a disbelieving look. "Well I don't know! Do I look like someone who shoots for fun?" Phil didn't say anything, his expression going blank.

"Don't answer that," she snapped in frustration.

"What do you think the odds are no ones home?" Phil asked, turning his attention back to the ring of trailers.

"Zero," Melinda replied fatalistically. "We have to call this in, get backup."

"We can't," Phil shook his head, resigned. "The snows still coming down we'll have to ride back to get a signal out."

"Great, and it took us an hour to get out here and we still don't have what we came for." Melinda had that frustrated look Phil was used to seeing on her face right before she lost her temper and started shooting all her problems. He really didn't care for that look, largely because he was fairly sure Mel considered him one of her problems right now.

"Barton's shelter was just over that ridge," Phil said, nodding toward the snow covered hillside. "I'm not seeing any guards or surveillance here. You cover me, I'll go in real quiet, check the structures. If no one's awake I'll hike up on foot, grab him, bring him back down, and we'll book it back to town."

"What if someone is awake?"

"I'll still hike up the ridge and get Barton," Phil replied. "I'll signal you and you can bring the snowmobile up around the back side of the ridge. If they do hear us, we won't sound close."

"I love this plan," Melinda replied, anger pulling at the corners of her mouth. "There's just one problem with it, you can't cover me and your position on the ridge at the same time." She reached out, smacking him in the back of the head.

"Barton can cover our position, I'll cover you," Phil replied, frowning at her.

"Are you deranged?" she hissed at him. "Barton's been out here in the snow since yesterday noon and he's been buried in a snow drift since you left him there last night! What do you think he's going to shoot with his frozen hands and icicles hanging off his face?"

"I'd put my faith in Barton's accuracy if he'd broken his shooting arm and lost an eye," Phil replied vehemently.

"I want new friends," she snarled half under her breath.

"Five minutes," Phil said, shuddering as he lowered the hood of his parka and pulled his hat more snuggly around his ears. "If anyone's awake they'll have to have a light on, it won't be hard to tell from inside the compound. Cover me." Melinda threw him a dark glare, crouching into the shadows of the drifting snow as Phil skittered along the tree line, creeping up on the first trailer.

Phil was never one to let himself get distracted in the field. He was very good at compartmentalizing, generally speaking. He'd discovered early on that the easiest way to stay focused was to have a mental checklist, like surveillance cameras flicking from one view to the next. Porch six, porch five, the gap between two and three, the gap between one and two. His eyes swept over each access point in his line of sight, his feet crunching through the snow as he crept up on the back of the nearest trailer. The windows were high off the ground, higher than he could stretch but he wasn't surprised by that. He fished in his pocket until he found what he was looking for, a small mirror on a telescopic arm. He felt a smug grin pull at this lips as he extended it, checking the gap between trailer five and six again before chancing a look in the mirror, all clear. Trailer two and three were dark as well. In trailer four he found the TV on, droning softly, its picture snowy but no sign of movement and a figure asleep in a heap of a recliner. Trailer five was also dark and he reeled in the telescopic mirror, checking all the porches and Melinda's sight line before creeping through the darkness toward trailer six. This one was the only one with an obstructed sight line, but if he was careful he should be able to check it without leaving his six exposed.

His radio made a hissing noise just as he'd doubled back and rounded the corner of trailer five, preparing to make a quick dash across the yard to trailer six. He frowned down at it, glancing over at where he knew May was watching before checking every door again. He pulled the radio from the clip, lowering the volume as he swept the compound before heading toward the last trailer.

"-olson - cop-" The voice was broken and barely understandable but the sound of static seemed almost percussive in the cold stillness and he scrambled to get his gloved thumb on the button to silence it.

"Jes- Couls- get -own!"

He didn't get another warning. The door of trailer six nearly blew off its hinges from a shotgun blast, the sound piercing the stillness. The shot hit him square in the chest, impacting his vest and sending him flying off his feet to land flat on his back a handful of yards away, well out of Melinda's line of sight. Phil gasped for breath, his ears ringing, the impact of the shotgun to his chest forcing the air from his lungs and making his vision swim. He could hear more gunshots and screams but the sounds were distant, drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears. He scrambled to draw his sidearm, emptying it into the kneecaps of the man running toward him brandishing a hand gun. He scrambled for a fresh clip as the man tumbled to the ground, but before he could reload he felt the gun wrenched from his grasp and he looked up into the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle.

"Say goodnight, G-man," the man standing over him said.

Phil flinched as the shot rang out, his hand flying up to cover his face on reflex as the gunman was blown off his feet, landing in the snow in a splatter of blood.

"You know if you were going to turn up so fucking late the least you could do is not get shot!" a very raspy and familiar voice said derisively. Phil gulped in a struggling breath tilting his head back farther into the snow to see Barton standing only a few yards behind him, a couple of tree branches duck taped to his broken leg and a sniper rifle clutched in his hands.

"Nice shooting," Phil said, coughing, his vision graying out around the edges as he noticed Melinda running through the snow drifts toward them.

"I hope you told Fury I said he was a lying bastard," Barton declared, limping across the yard to lean over him with a frown. "Because I'm pretty pissed at all of you right now."

"Noted," Phil replied, nodding slowly before passing out.

"Shot in the chest?"

"We get shot a lot in our line of work," Clint admitted.

"Define: a lot," Darcy prompted with a narrow eyed look.

"Counting kevlar shots," Clint tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling as if the answer were recorded there. "Fifty… six. Fifty-seven. Does being shot with a slingshot count as being shot?"

"How big was the rock?" she asked.

"Not rocks, little napalm pellets," He replied, leaning his elbow on the table and making an 'okay' sign, eying the diameter of the shape of his finger and thumb.

"Then yes, that counts as being shot," Darcy said, making a face.

"Fifty-seven," Clint nodded, returning his attention to his coffee. "Anyway, body armor protected his chest but he still broke three ribs, May and I ended up loading him into the sled and I had to hang on to her the whole ride back into town."

Phil blinked his eyes open to late morning light filtering in through the window of the tiny rural hospital and the sound of angry swearing out on the front porch. He'd feel bad later about leaving Melinda to deal with his latest brilliant plan but right now he was getting a perverse sort of glee listening to her and Fury spew profanity at each other in Mandarin. He didn't actually speak Mandarin but he knew for a fact that the only Mandarin Fury knew consisted of vulgarities and ordering alcohol. It was probably a really interesting conversation.

The curtain separating his room from the rest of the hospital was partially pushed aside and Barton appeared, his leg in a bright purple walking cast and an extra large plain styrofoam cup in each hand.

"I see you got an upgrade on your splint," Phil observed, his voice raspy. Barton looked better than he had a few hours ago, there were pink wind burns on his face and his fingernails still looked a bit pale but otherwise his color had improved.

"Make fun of my duck tape again, sir, and I will drink both of these right in front of you," Barton replied, but there was the slightest smirk to his lips. Phil smiled back at him, wincing as he reached out for the second cup, Barton made sure he had a stable hold on it before carefully sinking into the plastic chair beside the bed. The first sip was like heaven and Phil tried not to sigh in pleasure, whatever the hospital had him on for his cracked ribs they weren't being terribly generous with it.

"Team was already heading out while we were on the way back, got the girls and the ringleaders," Clint reported. "They're on the other side of the hospital. Their families just got here, I think they're going to be okay."

"Good news," Phil nodded. "Sorry it took me so long to get back."

"Naw, May told me you were hypothermic, you can't help that," Barton brushed the apology aside. "This whole opp was a shitshow, happens sometimes. I think I'm going to have to buy the R&D guys donuts when I get back though, based on my field test I'm going to recommend the emergency shelter as required winter gear."

"You and me both," Phil nodded.

"At least we made the best of a bad job," Barton declared, wrapping his hands around the styrofoam cup.

"Some of us better than others," Phil shook his head. "You saved my life, Barton." Clint let out a snort of a laugh.

"You're a tough bastard. You saved your own life."

"I'm not too proud to be honest with myself," Phil swallowed, meeting Barton's gaze. "I got lucky."

"Let me tell you something, Phil," Clint said, running his fingers through his unkept hair. "Luck lives in the city. That's whether you get hit by a bus or not. Where your bank is robbed or not, that's luck. That's winning or losing. Luck doesn't live out here in the middle of nowhere. Here, you survive or you surrender. Wolves don't kill unlucky deer. They kill the weak ones."

* * *

"You are so full of shit," Darcy said with an unamused frown.

"What?" Clint asked, eying her warily.

"That's the end of Wind River," she replied, her brow knitting in disapproval. Clint was silent for a long moment.

"Was it good?" he asked finally.

"Are you kidding me?" she demanded. She was doing a fairly decent impression of Steve's disappointed face, it was very unsettling. "Did you just make that whole thing up?"

"No!" Clint protested. "I swear that's what happened!"

"And you have the balls to ask," she said, jabbing her spoon at him. "Where the rumors that Coulson shot you come from."

* * *

Just another heart in need of rescue  
Waiting on love's sweet charity  
An' I'm gonna hold on for the rest of my days  
'Cause I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams

David Coverdale & Bernie Marsden - Here I Go Again


	4. Well you're a real tough cookie

**4\. Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history**

"I could tell you about the time a building fell on me and I ended up at Cincinnati Children's Hospital," Clint suggested. "That was a trip."

"Clint, everyone knows that story," Darcy said around a forkful of lemon strudel. He balked, blinking back at her.

"Everyone?"

"Two words pal: YouTube."

"Really?" He wasn't even completely sure why he was surprised except that it always seemed surprising every time he was reminded that he was a celebrity now.

"One kid made a Mocumentary," Darcy nodded, licking her fork.

"I wonder if it was the Aneurysm kid," Clint mused pensively. "She was ballsy. I was going to make her my Secretary of Ice Cream and Foreign Affairs."

"How come you didn't?"

"Eh, Coulson and Nat staged a coup before I could solidify my government," Clint replied, his shoulders sagging in disappointment.

"Dude, I have to tell you," Darcy waved her fork at him. "On behalf of the planet, thank you for trying to break out of medical before they can medicate you."

"Just doing my part to keep the world safer," he replied saluting her with his coffee mug. "Oh! Hey! It's not a super spy story but did I ever tell you about the annual SHIELD team building Tag Tournament?" Darcy stared at him in a way that made him uncomfortable.

"That's not a movie."

"No, it's an article in the Wall Street Journal," She replied, giving him a narrow-eyed look. "They're talking about making a movie of it though." Clint let out a huff, rolling his eyes.

"Everyone's played Tag, Darce, everyone," he insisted.

"Not everyone is still doing it in their thirties," She pointed out with a grin. "I can't believe Natasha would go along with that."

"Are you kidding? Strike Team Delta won every year after she joined SHIELD," he answered smugly.

"How did that happen anyway?" Darcy gave him a considering look. "She told me you were sent out to kill her but you made a different call. She wouldn't tell me anything else."

"It was my first mission where I was Agent in Charge," His brow furrowed in a pained expression. "Yeah, I'm not really sure I should tell you this."

"Why?" she asked. "So you decided to recruit her instead of kill her, how bad a story can that be?"

"It would be a totally awesome story if that's what I'd actually done," he nodded in agreement.

* * *

"The Black Widow, aka Irina Zlataryova, aka Tatiana Sokolova, aka half a dozen other things," Fury, the newly minted Director of SHIELD said as photos and snatches of video ticked by on the TV in the corner of the conference room. He hit the pause button on the remote freezing the frame on a still of Zlataryova in three quarter profile her blonde hair obscuring most of her face. "The KGB's deadliest and most successful secret agent in history."

"The boogeyman," Maria Hill muttered half under her breath. Clint very carefully didn't let his smile bleed through as, beside her on the other side of the conference table, Jasper Sitwell barely stifled a snort of amusement. Out of all the recent Junior Agents to make it to the strike division he liked the pair of them the best but he wasn't about to tell them that. Both of them were fast tracking to level five and command of their own missions. He wasn't sure either of them knew that though.

"Pretty eyes," Clint observed, frowning at the photo in the briefing packet. It was a head shot, Irina's crisp blue suit and the partial logo in the corner hinting that the photo had been lifted from a company ID. He held it up to the light, studying her features. "So, has anyone at SHIELD considered telling her the KGB doesn't exist any more?"

"You keep telling yourself that," Phil muttered at him with a smirk. Clint balled up one of the napkins sitting by the box of donuts in the middle of the table and lobbed it at his head but Coulson batted it away without even looking up. On Clint's other side Melinda May jabbed him in the shin with her foot.

"If you two are done," Fury said drily, eyeing the three of them as if they were more trouble than the juniors. Clint looked up with his most innocent smile, relying on Mel and Phil to have matching expressions. It made Fury crazy. "Far as we can tell, Zlataryova's been in play for at least the last fifteen years. Most of her work has been in eastern Europe, a couple of forays into South America to deal with Soviet security threats, nothing directly connected to US or Western European interests, not until recently. She fell off the radar for a few months while the Russians were restructuring their government and then she popped back up, first to deal with domestic drug cartels, a handful of assassinations of what we're pretty sure were corrupt Soviet cronies trying to position themselves in post communist politics. And then two years ago she took out a key SHIELD witness involved with the Ten Rings. We took her out, or so we thought." He unpaused the TV and choppy video from what looked like a tourist's camcorder began to play, a slender, muscular woman in a black dress was in a shootout with a team of SHIELD agents. She took a hit to the chest, tumbling off the docks and into the sea. Fury hit the pause again as she hit the water.

"She cropped up again about three months later, very much not dead," Phil said nodding. "Art theft recovery, wasn't it?" Fury nodded in reply and Clint let out an impressed whistle, flipping through the pages in the briefing packet.

"More political assassinations," Fury continued. "All Russian domestic so we stayed out of it, a few trafficking rings, some contract work for petty crime lords, and then last year Industrial espionage at Hammer Tech."

"Ooo, bet that blew up the skirts at the Pentagon," Clint said with a grin, flipping back to the blue suit photo. "SHIELD isn't in the business of dealing with this kind of thing, why isn't the FBI doing their job?"

"Because of what happened next," Fury replied, pressing the remote again. This video was much more crisp and clear but in black and white. It was SHIELD safe house surveillance, one of the boltholes in Germany if Clint wasn't very much mistaken. He remembered being there vaguely. The five man team wasn't one Clint readily recognized, not until a woman, tying her long golden hair up in a ponytail, flopped onto the sofa, grinning at one of the other agents. Mary Anne Lewis. Clint felt his stomach sink and he quickly tracked the men in the room until he saw Roy Breemer. Well shit.

It happened so fast he barely had time to register what he was seeing. The window at the back of the house shattered, a figure barreling through it, lithe and too quick to see. Throwing knives left both her hands, killing the two agents neared the window. The intruder snapped the neck of the third agent and fired a gun, a head shot to Breemer, before taking on Lewis in hand to hand. It was over in seconds. The figure took two slow deep breaths, scanned the room, keeping her chin tilted down so her hair partially obscured her face from the cameras then she straightened her shoulders and marched purposely through the house to the kitchen and out the back door.

"Okay, I think I peed a little bit," Clint grimaced at the TV. Across the table Hill and Sitwell were both looking a little pale. Clint didn't even have to glance at Phil to know he wasn't looking at the screen at all.

"You're all here," Fury said, leaning into the table on his palms with his most steely-eyed expression. "Because last night an undercover agent on an active op slipped us some intel. Zlataryova is meeting with Bruno Gueist, in Bremerhaven in five days. You people are the most out of the box thinkers I have, you're going to put together a plan to take her out."

Clint didn't twitch, he wasn't particularly surprised by that declaration but he couldn't help sneaking a look at Hill and Sitwell who were sitting across from him with wide eyes, both of their postures unnaturally straight.

"Kids," he muttered to Phil who only hummed softly in agreement.

"Just to be clear, we can't just blow up Bremerhaven, right?" May asked drolly. Clint held up his fist to her and she bumped it without turning her head.

"Despite the fact that that would probably lead to less collateral damage, no," Fury answered drily. "The Council frowns on that kind of thing."

"Gueist is adjacently crooked more than actually criminal, his public image is pretty clean," Sitwell observed thoughtfully. "Most of what we have on him is barely illegal, why's he getting tangled up with the best assassin on the planet?"

"Brokering, we think," Coulson supplied. "Whoever Gueist is working for it looks as if he's meant to vet the Widow and then set up a meeting between her and the actual client."

"At least Gueist won't see a need for a ton of personal security," May shrugged, Clint nodded in agreement.

"I think whatever we plan, we need to have some kind of idea why our team got made in the first place," Hill said, her expression pinched as she stared up at the frozen image on the tv. "Alpha strike was our best covert team."

"I was starting to like her," Clint complained, turning to Phil with a sad pout and dialing up the whine at the end of the phrase. Across the table Hill's cheeks turned pink and Sitwell stifled his bark of a laugh in his fist.

"Don't get attached to your coworkers," Phil replied emotionlessly, still studying the intel. "I keep telling you, it makes it harder to shoot them when they go rogue." Clint heaved the most dramatic sigh he could muster, slumping down in his chair.

"You shoot one agent in the knee and all of a sudden you're a useless pacifist," Clint grumbled, darting a look across the table at Hill and Sitwell who were failing spectacularly to hide their horrified expressions.

"Do we know for certain that Alpha's communication was secure?" May asked as Fury's eyes narrowed in disapproval.

"We know neither the hardware nor the scrambling protocols were tampered with," Fury replied.

"But that doesn't discount descrambling we don't know about," Phil said as Fury nodded in agreement.

"Doesn't preclude them just getting made on the op either," Clint added, wincing a little, he glanced out of the corner of his eye at Phil.

"Say it," May prompted flatly. Clint heaved a real sigh this time.

"Lewis was perfect undercover," Clint began, picking out his words carefully. "She was really flawless, completely Method. I found it damn unnerving, she never dropped character, not until she handed in her after action. But Breemer, he was a good guy, I hate saying anything bad about him, but there were cracks. He didn't always play the part perfectly. I always knew where he was in the room because he looked like a fed. I don't know how else to explain it, but when I was an independent you learned to pick up on these things, your life depended on it. If the Widow is even half as good as we think then there's no way she wouldn't have caught on too."

"So there's no way of knowing where the weak link was?" Sitwell asked, his brow furrowing. Phil let out a huff of a breath, shaking his head slowly. "Could we take her out with the new drone tech?"

"In theory," Melinda nodded slowly. "They're pretty quiet and the range is longer than most snipers can shoot." She glanced at Clint and he gave her a conceding nod. The range on the drones was pretty far out.

"I don't know if they're quiet enough," Hill said. "In an urban area like this where do we launch from?"

"Well about the only way we have a chance of taking her down is hiding from very far away and praying she doesn't see us," Sitwell observed. "Can we get SI to build us Skynet in under 4 days?"

"You know, that's a thought," Phil admitted. "Stark Industries has been pushing some new strike tech, experimental, do we know how precise it's supposed to be? Maybe we could offer to field test."

"About as precise as a propane truck driving through a glass factory," Fury replied.

"And we're back to blowing up part of Germany," May observed.

"Let me go after her." Clint said, frowning down at the photo of Zlataryova, her soft, warm eyes and the delicate sweep of her honey brown curls. He looked up, ignoring the way Phil tensed beside him and instead fixed his gaze on Fury.

"I need Coulson on the Jacksonville op," Fury replied with a frown.

"Coulson doesn't need a sniper for that," Clint said, which was absolutely true but before he could say anything more Coulson cut him off.

"Will you please stop acting like that's your only skill set," Phil huffed in frustration, glaring at him darkly.

"Playing the dumb carney who learned targeting on the midway is the only defense mechanism I have around here," Clint replied, which was also true. He was probably going to regret letting Hill and Sitwell in on that at some later point.

"You're insulting the intelligence of the out of the box thinkers," Phil said drolly, his hand waving at the two juniors on the other side of the table. Ah, there was that moment of regret.

"I'm teaching them the value of dishonesty and not to blindly trust their senior officers," Clint insisted pompously. "I'm doing them a service." Phil looked distinctly unimpressed. Clint gave him up as a lost cause and turned back to the Director.

"I can get close enough to take her out without getting close enough to let her get me," Clint continued as if the exchange had never happened. "We might not get another shot at this. We owe it to Alpha and every active field agent we have to make sure she's out of play."

"If Barton says he can do it, I'll back him up," Phil added. Clint tried not to smile but it was a close thing.

"Sure you will," Fury shot back with his most disapproving frown before narrowing his eyes at Clint. "I don't like sending anyone out solo on a kill op."

"Send Hill with me," Clint said with a shrug. "She's ready." He very carefully only glanced at Hill out of the corner of his eye, she was sitting ramrod straight, her eyes unnaturally wide and her lips parted as if in shock. Of all the recent intakes to make it to this level she was far and away the youngest and, as far as Clint was concerned, the best. He was counting on calling her ma'am some day and doing it with just enough underlying snark that no one but her would notice. It was going to be great.

"Kids," Melinda muttered softly. Clint bit the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing.

"You feel up to babysitting this idiot, Hill?" Fury asked drily.

"Absolutely sir!" she replied, siting up even straighter. Damn that had to be painful.

"Put together a plan," Fury said with a decisive nod as he turned to Clint. "Whatever resources you need, Barton, make this the top priority."

"Yes sir," Clint replied.

"Do not get killed," Phil muttered half under his breath as Fury spewed a ream of instructions at Hill who was, wonder of wonder, furiously taking notes. The kid must have really wanted this promotion badly.

"Aw sir," Clint murmured back, "It's so nice you care."

"The paperwork is appalling and Melinda's spent a lot of time and energy on Hill," Phil replied.

"And here I thought we were BFFs," Clint said, turning his most innocent, wide eyed expression on Coulson.

"Care to share with the class, Barton?" Fury asked drily.

"Just can't wait to go hunt down the mean lady, sir," Clint answered smoothly, his grin excited as he met the Director's dark glower.

"Get to work," Fury ordered menacingly. May stood, leaning over the table as Hill and Sitwell spread out the latest satellite images. Phil sloughed off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves as he moved to the computer in the corner and Clint ambled to his feet, following him.

"Sorry for what I said about Breemer," Clint gave an awkward shrug, keeping his voice low as he settled on the edge of the workstation. "He was your friend."

"We were in advanced undercover training together," Phil replied, resigned as he meticulously tabbed through files on the screen. "It's not like I didn't know."

"He was a good guy," Clint added, because he felt he had to. Breemer had been a good guy, and a good agent. He'd even been good undercover, but not great, never great, and in the end sometimes being good wasn't good enough.

"Clint, don't let her take out any more good people," Phil pleaded, a wince pinching his expression as he shot a look out of the corner of his eye. "Including yourself."

"Do my best," Clint shrugged back, feeling awkward. Phil gave him a small smile.

"What are you doing tonight?" he asked, clearly finding the file he wanted.

"Eh, I thought I'd go out to Bed Stuy," Clint said with another lazy shrug, following him toward the printer in the corner. "Troll for muggers, test the new trank arrows from R&D."

"Oh," Phil's expression brightened as he collected his paperwork. "I could play the Patsy."

"Hell yeah!" Clint grinned back at him.

"I liked you two assholes better when you hated each other," Fury observed, glaring at them as he stormed past, heading out the door.

* * *

"I just need a minute to visualize Wide-Eyed Baby Agent Maria Hill," Darcy insisted, pressing her fingers to her temples with a starry-eyed expression.

"Everyone starts somewhere," Clint reminded philosophically.

"There's hope yet that I could one day be a bad ass," she said

"You tased a god, kid, I think your street cred is safe," Clint chuckled.

"I never thought of it that way," Darcy admitted. "So you didn't blow up Germany?" Clint shook his head.

"We spent the next two days putting together a plan," Clint continued. "We couldn't be sure our communications were secure, so we decided to go really old school with coded messages on an open channel, hoping that we'd go unnoticed if we were using civilian communications. We had a half dozen safe houses that only Coulson, Hill, and I new the locations for. I set up camp in the shipping district and Hill was at the first of the safe houses keeping an eye on our surveillance for me.

* * *

"Hey, sis, where are ya?" Clint murmured into the earpiece. They were connecting over cell towers, using the chatter of people meeting up on a Friday night to mask them from discovery. Through the scope of his rifle he could see Bruno Gueist and his henchmen milling in the shipping yard,

"Heading up to the club now," Hill replied, her voice cheerful. Clint couldn't decide if it was because it was her first mission as a handler or if she was throwing herself into the role. If this mission went well, meaning if they both lived, she'd probably be handling her own team soon. "How's the action?"

"It's crowded and the drinks here are terrible," Clint said with a frown. Gueist must have hired some extra muscle just for this meeting, Clint didn't think he actually had six bodyguards.

"That's weird," Hill replied. "I thought Jazz said it was a choice spot." Clint's frown deepened. He gave Gueist a careful once-over then switched to his nearest bodyguard, one he was fairly sure he recognized from the briefing material. The man was sticking to Gueist like glue, way too close to be effective. Clint turned his attention the the second bodyguard.

"Dad called earlier," Hill said, doing a good job of making it sound off-hand. Clint grinned to himself. Phil was going to be royally pissed when he read that codename in the after-action. "He says not to let you get me into trouble."

"I'll bet he did," Clint replied. "I already got the lecture from Mom."

Not as pissed as Fury, but Clint lived dangerously. The third bodyguard successfully checked, he moved on to the fourth who was looking to be just as nondescript and questionably competent as the rest of his knuckle-dragging pals.

"Oh, hey I think I see your type heading down your way," Hill said, perking up. "Pretty eyes, blue dress, nice hair." Clint dropped his closer look at thug number five and swept his scope toward the north side of the shipping yard. Sure enough, there was the Widow, moving in from between the shipping containers in an actual navy blue dress that hugged her body like a glove. Clint blinked twice, desperately trying to rewire his brain. How did she fight in that thing?

"Yeah, nicely spotted," Clint replied, trying to sound mildly lecherous. He checked the Widow's approach then zoomed back to Guiest and his men, all of them oblivious to the oncoming danger.

All but one.

"Oh," he whispered involuntarily, his eyes growing wide in alarm. The Black Widow slunk out of the shadows like an enchantress materializing out of thin air, her golden hair curling around her shoulders. The sixth bodyguard had been on alert before she even made her move and Clint tensed as Guiest offered his hand in smarmy, charismatic greeting and the Widow failed to take it.

"Aw shit," he said

"What?" Hill asked, a hint of panic in her tone. They hadn't planned for this, he hadn't given her a code word for this, he could only hope she was as smart as he thought she was.

"Party crashers," He said quickly. The Widow was still standing three feet from Guiest, his hand still outstretched.

"Wait," Hill paused a moment, and he could hear her understanding in the squeak of her voice. "For real?"

"No, no, no, no, no," Clint murmured as Guiest offered up his most charming smile, extending his hand just a fraction farther. The Widow reached out this time to take it.

"Bro, what's going on?" Hill demanded, the moment of panic pushed aside. She really was good, he was going to tell Phil that if there was anything left of this mission to salvage. He barely had time for that thought as the Widow's hand closed around Guiest's and then all hell broke loose. She yanked on his arm so hard that Guiest went flying across the shipping yard, his body slamming head first into a shipping container and crumpling to the ground in a heap. The first bodyguard met a not dissimilar fate almost at the same time she garrotted the second, pulling him in front of her as the remaining guards opened fire. She kicked the now dead man into the fourth guard, stealing the gun of the third and opening fire on the fifth as she took a run up, landing on the final man who Clint was absolutely certain was a Russian Federal Security agent.

"Oh no," he whispered as he watched the fight, his eyes wide like saucers.

"Bro?" Hill prompted, her tone probably more stern than believable for their covers.

"Abort." he said quickly as the Widow faked a punch and used the distraction to grab the Russian FSB agent by the chin, snapping his neck.

"What the hell?"

Well it was too late to worry about covers now.

"Maria," He said, returning the arrow he'd drawn to the quiver and drawing three different ones in the time it took to say her name. "I am about to do something incredibly dangerous and irretrievably stupid, cut the line, tell Coulson I ordered you to evac to Magenta, do not come looking for me, I'll reestablish contact within 8 hours. Do exactly as I say."

"What about the Widow?" she demanded, though Clint could hear her frantically packing up surveillance in the background as he set the first arrow to the string.

"We've lost her, I'm going to try to salvage the mission," he replied, staring at the lone figure standing in the pile of bodies in the middle of the shipping yard.

"That wasn't in the plan!"

"Cut the line! Evac now! Go!" Clint released his bow as he heard the call disconnect, the soft brush of the bowstring the only sound. He caught the woman square in the chest as she turned, no doubt looking for other threats. She staggered staring down at the dart head lodged in her shoulder and raised her gun.

"Shit!" Clint let a second arrow fly, this one sending her to her knees and then a third. The woman let out an angry feral sound and tipped face first into the pavement.

"Oh my god, I'm going to die," Clint whispered, grabbing his bag and leaping over the wall, his feet pounding the pavement as he ran toward the prone form of the Black Widow.

* * *

"I'm confused," Darcy said, blinking at him.

"Not as confused as I was," Clint admitted.

"Why-"

"I'm getting to that," he said.

"How are you not dead?" she demanded.

"I'm getting to that part too."

* * *

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Clint muttered under his breath as he stared at the woman handcuffed to the bed, one wrist at each of the bedposts and each hand wrapped in duck tape, the thumbs angled out like a mitten. Her ankles and knees were also duck taped. He'd briefly considered taping her torso to the bed frame as well but he'd run out of tape. Clearly if he was going to be level five his go bag was going to need some readjustment.

The abandoned apartment building on the edge of the shipping district was littered with trash and drug paraphernalia, he'd spotted it as he'd set up his sniper's nest and had quickly discounted it because of the debris and lack of quick egress. He wasn't happy about being here but he didn't dare risk dragging the limp form of the woman any farther, not because it would attract attention as much as he'd been worried this particular woman was probably going to wake up and kill him any second now before he could get her secured. Even now he wasn't real confident in the state of things but just fifteen minutes into sedation that should have killed your average elephant she'd let out a soft huff of a breath that sent him twitching back to the other side of the room where he'd been ever since.

He was fairly sure the woman had been awake for at least ten minutes now, probably longer. It was hard to tell. She was doing a fairly decent impersonation of REM sleep but the problem with faking being asleep was that even watching hours of videos of yourself sleeping wasn't nearly enough to really sell the roll flawlessly. If she'd been awake longer than twenty he was already in trouble, but he wasn't nearly stupid enough to get any closer to her at this point in order to check.

"Okay, I know you're awake and you know I'm watching," Clint said finally. "If you're just waiting for me to break, I'm happy to do that. I'm not a big fan of dick measuring contests, especially not when I'm going to lose." There was no reply. Clint drew in a slow steady breath.

"Also, you should probably know that I put chewing gum in the locks." There was another two full seconds of silence and the woman's eyes opened, staring at him with a cold, calculated reserve.

"Bit of overkill?" she asked, her words soft, almost soothing.

"Oh no, not at all," Clint shook his head minutely, his handgun trained steadily on her. "And I don't think for a moment that you can't get out of there, might take you a couple minutes, ten tops. The wolves who raised me didn't bring up any idiots." The woman didn't reply, her gentle emerald eyes watching him.

"I'm Hawkeye," he said. "You got a name you're partial to or should I just call you Widow?"

"Tasha," she replied, her tone almost amused. Almost, but not quite. He checked the cuffs.

"Okay, Tasha," he said, keeping his tone as polite as possible. "I'm looking for some information and I was hoping we could work something out."

"You seem to have me at a disadvantage," She replied, her hands twitching ever so slightly. "You could force the information out of me."

"Ah, no. And no," He replied. "I think I'll just mind the manners I don't actually have and stay over here in my little chair with my little gun well out of reach of your grabby, stabby little hands until you decide to be helpful."

"And if I tell you what you want to know you'll do what? Let me go?" She asked, now clearly amused.

"Oh, hell no," Clint said. "I was thinking I would go and pray to whatever pantheon that'll listen that I'm very, very far away by the time you get free."

"Will you take the gum out of the locks before you go?" she questioned. Her eyes were soft and warm and Clint had the sudden feeling that he was a mouse being stared down by a rattlesnake.

"I'll throw you the key while I run out the door," He offered. Tasha frowned, studying him. Finally she let out a sigh.

"Fair," she conceded, though she didn't seem pleased about it. "How do you know I won't lie to you?"

"I don't," Clint shrugged, his pistol still aimed at her chest. "But I wasn't planning on asking you anything that you'd have a reason to lie about. Probably." She gave him a tiny nod. Clint drew in a slow breath, checking the cuffs, the duck tape, the position of her hands. She hadn't moved that he could tell but it was like a race, his eyes against the most deadly assassin in the world.

"Okay, Tasha," he said. "What I'm curious about today is why my boss sent me here to kill a woman who looks like you, and was trained the same as you, and is definitely not you."

"How do you know it's not me?" she asked, demure.

"Because you're left handed," Clint replied. There was a hitch in her expression, a slow blink and then her mask was back in place.

"You're mistaken."

"No, you're left handed. You might not think you are, but you are," he replied, waving his left hand at her, the right one still clutching his gun. "Funny thing about being left handed. We're only about ten percent of the population and for years it was seen as a sign of weakness, schools, government institutions, religions all tried to train out left-handedness in childhood. Mixed success, but they put in the effort. Cultures all over the world vilified lefties."

"Fascinating," Tasha replied. She did not sound the least bit fascinated.

"It is," Clint agreed, his eyes checking her cuffs, the tape on her ankles. "It's also how I know that while you are definitely the woman who infiltrated Hammer Tech in April, you are absolutely not the woman who killed five of our best agents in Minsk last fall." There was the faintest shift in her expression, just a flicker, anyone else might have missed it. Clint tensed, his face going blank as he lined up the gun with her head.

"After the Belavezha Accords the KGB ended, all of its projects were terminated," Tasha said. "All but four." Clint stared at her a long moment.

"You're telling me there was more than one Black Widow?" he asked.

"I'm telling you that there were dozens," she replied, dispassionate. "How many no one knows, not any more. We were grouped by physical appearance, trained together until we were indiscernible one from another. Surgeries to correct any obvious defining characteristics. On the day the Red Room project was terminated some of the agents were retired, some were taken for reeducation. Some were reassigned to other organizations. Four escaped. One I didn't know, she disappeared. I haven't seen a trace of her since. One died two years ago in Perth."

"We got that one," Clint nodded. "I'm sorry."

"You're not," she replied. "It doesn't matter, if it did we wouldn't be talking now."

"Do you know where I can find the last one?" He asked.

"If you think you can avenge the death of your friends, you're mistaken," She said.

"They weren't my friends," Clint replied with a faint shrug. "But they were good people. I don't want to see any other good people end up the same way."

"You're a hero then," Tasha said.

"No," he let his lips twitch up in the faintest smirk, he could see her, trying to work it out, trying to make sense of it all. Coulson would tell him to give less away, to talk without saying anything but she was too smart for that, smarter than anyone he'd ever faced down before. "Look, you want intel about this op I'll give it. I've done some terrible things, things I can never take back. I didn't want to do them, I just got in a place where I couldn't do anything else. But I can now, I have that choice. The guys I work for, that sent me here, they gave me that choice, they gave a dumb kid with no future a chance to make something better of himself. A chance to use my skills for something that matters. And I can't make up for what I did, but I can try to balance the books a little. Do some good, be proud of what I'm doing. I got lucky someone gave me that chance, I don't plan on wasting it. And those guys that died, they might not have been my friends, but my boss is a good guy, and they were his friends. I don't want to let him down."

"You're not going to shoot me." Tasha said, a flutter of confusion in her eyes.

"Not unless you make me," Clint agreed. "Where do I find the woman I'm actually looking for? Come on, Tasha, from what you've told me she's just competition making trouble for you, let me do you a solid."

"You'll never take her."

"I could have shot you," Clint reminded with a shrug. "Where is she?"

"Alion Vans, you'll find her in Larissa," Tasha replied. "Along the river near the amphitheater."

"Thank you," he said as sincerely as he could. He pulled the key from his pocket as he stood to his feet, backing slowly toward the door. "Just one more thing; How old are you, Tasha?"

"Twenty-two," she replied, the word almost automatic as if it were rehearsed. Clint nodded.

"You've been Twenty-two a while then?" She blinked back at him, the only indication that the question surprised her. "Yep, that's what I thought. Nice meeting ya, Tasha." he flung the key toward the foot of the bed, barreling through the door and running down the corridor at full speed, taking the stairs three and four at a time. He was barely to the back door of the building when he heard the snap of breaking wood and he charged out into the alley, ducking down as he rounded the corner, his feet flying over the uneven cobble as fast as they could carry him.

* * *

"You are so stupid," Darcy said in wonder. "How are you not dead?"

"Oh she wasn't going to kill me, probably," Clint replied with a shrug. "It was all there in the briefing, I just didn't have the whole picture to see it. Nat was the one taking out the traffickers and criminals, Alion was the political assassin. I caught up with Hill and a couple of hours later we were in Greece. I actually had less trouble tracking down and taking out Alion than I'd had with Tasha, she wasn't as careful, probably didn't think she needed to be."

"Phil must have had kittens."

"He wasn't happy."

* * *

"Fury's going to kill me," Clint said, staring into his vanilla milkshake with a hangdog expression.

"No, no he won't kill you," Phil sounded resigned as he carved into his eggs and hashbrowns with less enthusiasm than the quality of their breakfast warranted. "He'll erase both our memories and we'll spend the rest of our lives in exciting careers asking 'Do you want fries with that?' while old people count out their pennies to us." Clint let out a tiny whimper, taking a slurp of his milkshake.

"I'm really sorry, Phil," he said miserably. The twenty-four hour diner steps from SHIELD HQ New York was completely empty at this hour of the morning. SHIELD itself was always open and the owners of the diner had learned to capitalize on that quickly. That had been in the fifties. The original sign over the counter sill said 'Automat', whatever that was. Clint was pretty sure they hadn't changed their milkshake recipe in all that time but today his wasn't nearly as delicious as it normally seemed.

"I really want to be pissed at you," Coulson admitted, staring at his breakfast. "But I can't decide what else you should have done besides handcuff the Black Widow to your bed."

"It wasn't my bed," Clint protested. He let out another sigh. He still had his after action to write but Alion Vans, the Black Widow who had murdered Strike Team Alpha, was dead, he'd brought his trainee handler back without a scratch, and Bruno Guiest, slime ball extraordinaire, would be spending the rest of his life eating through a straw. For a highly successful mission it felt like a total clusterfuck. "I should have had Hill call in our change of plans. Or tried to bring her in or something."

"No, that could have compromised you," Phil shook his head. "Or killed you. Or both."

"I should have shot her?"

"No," Phil sighed, stabbing at his eggs. "that'd be unethical, particularly if you're right about her."

"If I'm not right about her she's going to hunt me down and eat me," Clint said, making a horrified face.

"Don't be silly, look at you," The calm female voice made every muscle in Clint's frame lock up and his eyes bulge as she slid into the bench beside him. "You're all sinew, you'd be like chewing shoe leather."

"Oh god," he whispered. Phil's sidearm was in his hand, the barrel trained at her head even before Clint could finish the words.

"Steady hands," She said kindly, tossing her ruby curls over her shoulder as she smiled in Phil's direction. "I admire that in a man."

"Hello Tasha," Clint's voice made a wheezing sound he couldn't help. Across the diner the lone waitress looked up from where she was filling the coffee machine, gave Phil's gun a hard glare as if to say 'don't get blood on my table,' and then returned her attention to her task. New Yorkers.

"We haven't been introduced," The Black Widow said to Phil, completely ignoring the gun pointed at her head. "Natasha Romanov."

"Charmed," Phil replied drily. "How may I help you this morning Ms. Romanov?"

"I'd heard recently that SHIELD was a good place for exceptional people to make good use of their skills," she replied without a hint of hesitation.

"I never mentioned SHIELD," Clint declared, panicked.

"You never said the word SHIELD," Tasha corrected.

"Oh god, Fury's going to kill me." Clint's head fell face first into the tabletop with a thumb and a sound like a drowning cat. Coulson stared at Natasha Romanov for a solid ten seconds

"I can't shoot her from this distance, can I?" Phil asked, his tone resigned. Clint didn't lift his head but he wobbled it 'no' anyway. Coulson let out a slow breath before carefully returning his gun to its holster.

"Why are you trusting me?" Tasha asked with a hint of curiosity.

"Because you could have already killed us both," Phil replied with a put upon frown, reclaiming his fork from his plate.

"I still might," she pointed out.

"Please do!" Clint's muffled voice rose from behind his arms. "It's better than what the director will do to me!"

"Please don't," Phil added, cutting into his hashbrowns. "I've invested a great deal of my department budget and personal resources on him." Clint let out a pained groan that both of them ignored.

"I take it you're the Agent responsible for recruiting Hawkeye." It wasn't a question. She stared back at Phil as if she had already pried him open and sifted though all the parts of him, sussing out his every secret.

"You were very graciously helpful on Hawkeye's most recent mission," Phil said by way of acknowledgement. "If there's something we can do to repay your generosity I'd certainly be glad to consider it." the faintest twitch of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"I have a ledger with a lot of red in it," she said. "I'd like to balance the books."

* * *

"Nat was really cool about the whole thing," Clint said with a fond smile. "When Fury walked into the diner half an hour later and I panicked and said 'she followed me home, can I keep her?' she didn't break my hands or anything."

"You have a death wish," Darcy observed. Clint only shrugged.

"She handed him a thumb drive and spent the next hour outlining all her intel over steak and eggs, it was the most surreal experience of my life," he added.

"The Black Widow recruited herself," Darcy said with a slow nod.

"I got the recruiting bonus," he said.

"Interesting things for your reputation?" she asked with a grin.

"So many interesting things."

* * *

You come on with it, come on  
You don't fight fair  
That's okay, see if I care  
Knock me down, it's all in vain  
I get right back on my feet again

Edward Schwartz - Hit Me With Your Best Shot


	5. Don't stand there watching me, follow me

**5\. Don't stand there watching me, follow me, show me what you can do**

"Natasha said that when she joined SHIELD no one would go out in the field with her but you and Coulson," Darcy said, slowly shredding the napkin from her strudel.

"Sort of," Clint shrugged, looking a little chagrined. "I put a lot of work into pissing Phil off when he took over as my SO. I was so good at it that by the time we ironed out all our problems word got around and none of the senior agents wanted to work with me. Fury made Phil Natasha's SO, I think to punish both of us. Anyway May'd been promoted to senior specialist so that more or less left Phil with the worst team player in SHIELD and the scariest assassin on the planet and no one over level four who'd willingly get near either of us."

"Must have been hard," Darcy pulled a face. "I never thought about it, but Natasha must have had a rough time adjusting."

"She actually did better than I thought she would," Clint smiled fondly. "She had some weird coping mechanisms."

* * *

"No, no, not a safe house. A house," Clint let out a sigh, flinging another dart. It sailed through the air landing in the dead center of the bullseye taped to the ceiling of the briefing room. He looked over at Natasha from where he was sprawled in the middle of the conference table. "You know, like a place of your own."

"I have a place here at headquarters," Natasha said neutrally. She was doing handstand pushups. She was doing them on one of the rolling chairs, her hands gripping the arm rests. She lowered herself down until the top of her head nearly brushed the seat and then pushed back up. Clint watched her for a long moment. He'd tried to do it once but he still had a scar from where he'd broken the coffee table in the senior agent's lounge and Phil had told him he wasn't allowed to try it any more.

"Not a work place," he said in exasperation, taking aim at the ceiling again. "A home place. A place to order pizza, and watch TV, and do your own thing."

"Like the laundry room," she replied. Clint stared back at her again, tamping down his frustration. Not for the first time he felt badly about the grief he'd given Coulson back when he'd first started at SHIELD. He wasn't sure if Romanov was serious or just yanking his chain but he got the distinct feeling that she was the way she was because her childhood had been even more messed up than his and that was all kinds of wrong on an infinite number of levels.

"Look, you've cleared probation, I know you've been going out into the city in your down time," he said with a sigh. "That's good, you've worked hard to prove yourself and you should have a chance to spend some time doing something besides work. I just thought if you wanted a place of your own I'd be happy to ask Coulson to give you a hand, he's great with real estate."

"You think I should acquire a residence in the city so that I can leave headquarters four or five days each month and," she paused as if thinking the scenario though carefully "expend my down time laundering musty linens and cleaning contaminated food products left unattended in the refrigerator?"

"Okay when you say it like that it sounds like a stupid idea," Clint admitted. Natasha continued her pushups with a condescending hum. "I just thought, you probably haven't had a lot of privacy and maybe you might enjoy that."

"For sexual relations?" she asked. Clint let out a choking noise, smacking his head into the tabletop. He hated sex conversations with Natasha. Her second week at SHIELD she'd been cat-called by a handful of idiot probationary agents in the gym and had responded by completely unironically pursuing all of them at once. Clint had happened by just in time to break things up before someone, someone who wasn't Natasha, got hurt. The next thing he'd known he was in Melinda's office listening to her explain the concept of sexual harassment and informed consent to a super spy whose code name implied she regularly sucked the life out of her under performing bed partners. Clint still felt traumatized by the whole experience. Mel was dating a shrink for god sake, you'd think the exposure to good mental health practices would make her less crazy.

"I'm not certain anyone at SHIELD would be a viable partner," Natasha added thoughtfully.

"That makes two of us," he muttered under his breath.

"You have a home." she said. Clint nodded in reply.

"Yep, 's kind of a dump." How he'd managed it continued to be a mystery. He was pretty sure Coulson was renewing his lease for him, which stood to reason since Coulson had set up auto pay on all his bills. "I figured you'd appreciate something more classy but it suits me fine." He threw another dart into the ceiling before glancing over at Natasha again. He watched her for a long moment, trying to work out the logistics of how he could buy a rolling chair then get it onto the subway and into his third floor walk up. The first step was probably finding a rolling chair store.

The door to the briefing room clicked open and Clint threw his last dart into the ceiling before stretching languidly.

"Hey Coulson, how're the level sevens treating you?" Clint rolled his head around toward the door and blanched instantly. Phil was wearing the blank, unreadable expression he normally only wore when he was fighting down blinding rage. Clint quickly looked over at Natasha who was rolling back to her feet and settling into her chair in one fluid motion. She seemed unperturbed, her expression relaxed as she kicked the chair up to the table. Clint wasn't dumb enough to think she hadn't already learned to read Phil like book. Well shit.

"I didn't do it," Clint said automatically, sitting up on the table and crossing his legs in front of him. Phil's only reply was a deeply unimpressed look, his lips a thin-set line. He didn't turn as he tossed down the newspaper tucked under his arm.

"Would you care to explain this?" he asked, his tone grave as he slid the paper in front of Natasha. She looked up at him with huge, liquid green eyes, no trace of guile in her expression. She tilted her head to the side slightly before looking down at the paper.

"Recent graduates face increasing employment hurdles," She read emotionlessly. She looked back up at Coulson as if giving that careful consideration. "Are you suggesting I'm responsible for the state of the economy?"

Phil's eyes narrowed at her threateningly and his index finger came down on the front page over an article below the headline. Natasha blinked back at him slowly.

"For the third time this month a local man has been assaulted by someone he met through a popular online dating site," Clint read from the article with a slight frown. "The victims have offered conflicting descriptions of their attackers but consistency of the evidence has led investigators to presume a lone perpetrator." Clint looked between Natasha and Phil. The pair of them staring each other down.

"Agent Romanov," Phil said, his tone firm. "I would hate to believe you would use the recent end of your probation to engage in criminal activity.

"He was sending unsolicited dick pics," Natasha replied the words rolling off her tongue with an unfamiliar distaste.

"Which is not a capital offense," Coulson said sternly.

"Which is why I didn't kill him," she replied. Clint winced.

"Them," Phil corrected, pinching the bridge of his nose. Natasha only shrugged.

"You're not supposed to admit you did it," Clint explained as Phil rubbed at his clearly forming headache. "If you admit to it he has to file that in the report."

"You specifically told me honesty with my team was in my best interest at SHIELD," she reminded him though she didn't seem perturbed. "You said it three times; never lie to Coulson."

"Yes, but," Clint admitted, making a pinched face. "Sometimes you have to lie to, well, it's complicated. But when you lie to Phil you need to lie so that he knows you're lying, really obviously lying. That way he can write down exactly what you told him and no one gets in trouble and no feels like they can't trust each other." He gave her a hopeful smile as Phil slumped down in one of the chairs and slowly banged his head into the conference table.

"I suppose I could learn to do that," She replied with a frown. "You're going to need to be more specific about when I'm supposed to lie."

"What did you do to them exactly?" Clint asked with a frown, looking down at the newspaper again. "The article is really vague."

"She rendered them unconscious and tattooed the offending member," Phil replied with a sour scowl, pulling a handful of photos out of the folder he was carrying and tossing them onto the table. Clint let out a long, low whistle.

"Objects in Photo are Smaller than they Appear," he read, nodding slowly in acceptance. "That is some really impressive ink-work, did you do that yourself?" Natasha's only reply was a smug smile of satisfaction.

"Agent Romanov," Phil began again, his eyes narrowed.

"It was a misunderstanding, sir," Clint said quickly, pasting on his most awful lie-face "I'm sure Agent Romanov just misinterpreted the sexual harassment briefing. Isn't that right Tasha?" He turned to her, waving his hand to indicate she should jump in.

"It was a misunderstanding," She repeated, looking first at Clint and then at Phil before continuing. "Agent May impressed upon me that sexually harassing behavior was not accepted at SHIELD and that I should feel justified in retaliating in a non violent manner."

"Oh my god, did she actually say that?" Phil demanded, burying his face in his hands.

"Um, yeah," Clint admitted, blowing out a breath. "I mean, I sort of checked out when she started suggesting raunchy replies because, no." He shuddered. Phil let out a faint whimper. He straightened his shoulders as if steeling himself.

"I want you both suited up and on the plane in fifteen minutes, we'll brief on the way," he said sharply. "And when we get back I will be conducting a sexual harassment briefing to address this." Natasha gave a sharp nod of acceptance as Clint let out a whine.

"Please tell me I don't have to go!"

"No senior agent shall brief a junior on sexual harassment issues without the presence of another agent," Phil recited the regulation with a sharp tone. "Get on the plane, we're going to the Marshall Islands."

* * *

"I've got to tell you, I might need to marry your partner," Darcy admitted.

"Many have tried," Clint observed, Darcy let out a snort of a laugh.

"What were you guys doing in the Marshall Islands?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "Isn't that like the middle of nowhere?" Clint let out a huff, shaking his head.

"That was like the worst mission ever," He looked up at Darcy to find her grinning at him. "Stop that."

"Your interest isn't paid yet, Barton. Spill," she ordered. Clint shook his head, a pained wince marring his expression.

"There'd been reports of an outbreak of an unknown infection on one of the islands," he said. "Symptoms similar to rabies, the whole area had been used to test nukes back during the Cold War so the first thing we figured was some kind of mutation. We were sent in to take over the operation from the local military, find the cause, and keep it from spreading off the island."

"Oh that's not going to go badly at all," Darcy observed. Clint shrugged.

* * *

"The situation's deteriorating," Natasha said in a low voice. Phil's eyes swept over the huddle of people crammed into the fire station. There were less than a thousand people on the atoll total and in this particular village less than a two hundred. What remained of them were now cowering in the only municipal building that housed both the local constabulary and the only medical services. Phil let out a sharp whistle that made the pair of Marshall Island Army regulars guarding the door jump and a second later Clint dropped out of the rafters beside them.

"Far as I can tell, all the leaders and elected officials are dead except that volunteer fire chief that helped us get everyone in here," Clint reported, his shoulders tense. "The Army boys are doing okay holding the perimeter but it's only going to be daylight for another four hours. Their shooting's not that good."

"We've tested everyone here for the virus," Natasha added. "The local doctor says everyone's clear except the woman who came in with two children a couple of hours ago. She's a carrier. They have her locked up in the jail."

"Not the fire chief's wife?" Clint asked, making a face as Natasha nodded. "Well fuck, this just went to hell. We're going to have to get these people out of here soon and we're going to need his help to do it. I don't know about you but my Marshallese is for shit."

"They don't seem terribly trusting of the military," Phil nodded in grim agreement.

"The zombie apocalypse just flattened their Seven-Eleven, would you be?" Clint asked skeptically. Phil only shrugged in grudging agreement.

"She could be the source of a cure," Natasha pointed out. "If we can get her to a secure medical facility, find out why she isn't showing signs of infection we might be able to at the very least inoculate."

"And if we can't she could spread the infection off the island," Phil said with a tired sigh. He turned to Clint. "Start grouping up the families for evacuation, youngest and oldest first. Tell the fire chief we're still waiting for the test results on his family if he asks. I'll start scrambling helicopters to lift out the survivors. Make absolutely sure that no one leaves here without a clean bill of health. Romanov, intercept his children, if you can get them onto transport without him noticing so much the better." Natasha gave a sharp nod, turning on her heel and hurrying off.

"Four hours, Phil," Clint said worriedly, keeping his voice low. "We can't hold this place through the night. It was built to withstand hurricanes, not Shaun of the Dead."

"They're not zombies," Phil repeated for what felt like the thousandth time.

"If it walks like a duck!" Clint replied, tossing his hands in the air. Phil let out a wholly inappropriate snort of a laugh. He shook his head, giving Clint a fond look.

"I don't like the idea of leaving anyone behind any more than you do," he said seriously, zeroing in on the real issue. "But if this gets out it could kill millions, it's spreading fast and we're nowhere near close to a cause."

"Can we at least sedate her and transport her to a secure medical vessel?" Clint pleaded. "That way if it breaks containment-"

"I'll make the request," Phil agreed. "But you have to remember it's not up to me." Clint nodded, turning away to search out the Fire Chief and get the survivors moving.

* * *

"That's awful," Darcy said her face crumpled in a pained expression. "I mean, I don't know what else you could do, but still."

"Sometimes you don't get the choice to be the hero," Clint said, staring into his coffee. "You just have to make the choice that saves the most lives you can and learn to live with it."

"What happened to the Fire Chief's family?"

"We were about three quarters of the way through the evacuation when he figured out what was going on," Clint replied with a wince. "He snuck down to the jail to say goodbye to her. I don't know what happened exactly. He got infected."

* * *

"Coulson, do you copy?" Clint shouted into his com as he raced through the hospital wing back toward the fire house, herding a terrified group of teenagers along with him. There were snarls like wild animals and horrified screaming coming from the direction of the wing that housed the jail, the sharp retort of gunfire peppering the air. He rounded the last corner waving them all onto an ambulance that Natasha had thrown open. He didn't know when she'd learned Marshallese but she was barking directions at the kids and loading them into the back.

"How you feeling about that decision to be a do-gooder now, Tasha?" he asked, picking up one of the smaller boys and heaving him into the ambulance. She only glared at him with narrowed eyes.

"I can't raise Coulson." she said without emotion.

"I can't get him either, he must be out of range," Clint nodded drawing his handgun and taking out one of the infected with a head shot.

"We've lost most of the army to the infection," She said, her jaw tight. "If we head to the harbor, there might be something seaworthy they haven't completely torched."

"No, go to the landing strip," Clint ordered. As terrifying as she was sometimes he kept reminding himself that he was her senior officer, he had to make the calls here. "Phil'll come back for us, I turned on my transponder." She gave him a disbelieving look over the head of the girl she was hauling into the ambulance.

"There's nowhere to land at the harbor," Clint said sternly. "And there's nothing but infected between here and there. Start her up, I'll cover us." Natasha gave a tight nod and hurried toward the driver's seat as he loaded the last child.

"Wait up!" Clint looked up to see the local doctor running toward them with a boy on one arm and towing a girl behind him. Clint reached for the girl, handing her off to the Fire Chief's son as the doctor loaded up the boy, clambering in after them. Clint took out another infected before jumping onto the back bumper and giving a sharp rap to the side of the ambulance, Natasha took off as he settled onto the bench near the door, his gun drawn. A few more infected tumbled out of the doors after them and he took them out as well as the ambulance raced toward the air strip.

"These kids all clean?" Clint asked worriedly, never taking his eyes off their six as the ambulance swerved down the debris littered road. It must have been a beautiful little coastal town once but now it looked like a war zone. There was an explosion and in the distance he could see black smoke rising from what had been the harbor. The doctor's eyes swept over the children huddled in the back of the ambulance, their eyes wide with fright and tears staining the cheeks of even the oldest.

"Yeah, I tested them myself," he said shaking his head with a horrified expression. "I don't understand how this happened."

"There's lots of things I don't understand," Clint said with a shrug. "Stuff like this just happens."

"No, it doesn't," the doctor insisted. "We're a research facility, I work at this kind of thing every day. None of this makes sense." Clint felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and he shifted back on the bench, keeping the road behind them in view but watching the doctor out of the corner of his eye.

"Like developing vaccines and stuff?" he said, adding a twang of Iowa to his drawl.

"I'm studying why sharks don't get cancer. We were making inroads toward a cure, targeted radiation therapy, targeted gene alteration. One day the work we were doing here was going to change the face of the world. We would have left human frailty behind. And now it's all lost."

Clint heard the sound of gunfire coming from the cab and the kids screamed, he glanced forward though the window to see that Natasha had shot out the windshield and he took aim out the back door, three more infected appeared from between the houses along the left, no doubt following the noise and he took those out as well.

"Radiation?" he asked as casually as he could. "Like, Gamma radiation?"

"Gamma's too unstable for what we do," the doctor said rubbing hie eyes. "We use Vita. You met our fire chief? His wife had breast cancer, I'd been treating her before all this. She was in complete remission."

"Is that a fact?" Clint asked, doing his best to sound impressed as his com gave out a crackle.

"Barton, Romanov, report!"

"Good to hear your voice, boss," Clint said with a grin, pressing his fingertips to his com as they bounced down the road. "Tasha's with me, we're headed to the landing strip with some stragglers.

"We'll be there in five," Coulson replied as Clint shot out more infected pursuing them. "Tell Romanov to turn on her transponder."

"Told you he was coming!" Clint shouted at her smugly. Tasha only flipped him off through the window. Clint turned back to the doctor. "Hey, hand me that towel, would you?" The doctor pulled the towel off the shelf holding it out and Clint grasped hold of it. He jerked the doctor's arm forward and in less than a moment Clint had slipped a pair of cuffs on his wrists.

"Who do you work for?" Clint demanded, training his gun on the doctor's head as the children let out frightened screams, backing away from them further into the ambulance.

"What are you-"

"Who do you work for!" Clint growled angrily. "You're doing medical research on an island in the middle of nowhere where all hell has just broken loose, now tell me who gives you your orders!"

"The Red Skulls," the doctor snapped at him.

"Fucking Neo-Hydra?" Clint rolled his eyes. It took all his effort not to pull the trigger in front of the kids. "This is fan-fucking-tastic! Tasha, I found the cause."

"Shoot him," she suggested dispassionately, taking another shot out the broken windshield. Clearly she wasn't as worried about traumatizing them as he was.

"The woman, the fire chief's wife," Clint said with a menacing frown. "She was patient zero, wasn't she?"

"I don't know!" the doctor replied. "I don't know what went wrong!"

"I'll tell you what went wrong, asshole, the sharks in this whole area have been exposed to gamma radiation from weapons testing," Clint snarled at him. "Did you factor that in?" The doctor gaped at him and Clint let out another curse.

"We're here!" Natasha shouted back at them as the sound of helicopter rotors filled the air.

"I ought to put a bullet in you," Clint said angrily, hauling the doctor out of the back of the ambulance as Natasha herded the children across the airstrip toward the chopper. An animal-like scream split the air and Clint spun on his heel, letting off his last shot at another infected charging toward them.

"Barton!" Coulson shouted at him. Clint tossed the gun aside, turning and drawing his bow in time to see the doctor making a mad dash for the trees.

"Freeze you son of a bitch!" he shouted but the doctor disappeared around one of the hangars.

"He's as good as dead," Natasha said tightly, loading the last of the children into the helicopter.

"I've got room for one more, Coulson!" The SHIELD pilot called back from the cockpit.

"You go," Natasha said quickly, turning to Clint. "If the virus is gamma based I'm immune."

"How can you be immune?" Coulson asked with a frown. Clint drew in a shaky breath.

"Get the kids out of here," he said, turning to Phil. He reached over and turned on Natasha's still inactive transponder. "We'll head to the coast, have transport out there, we're going to start swimming if you don't beat us to the beach. Don't let anyone shoot us!" Phil gave him a tight nod, closing the door of the chopper as the rotors picked up speed.

"You're an idiot," Natasha said, shooting him a withering look before turning on her heel and taking off at a jog toward the nearest hangar.

* * *

"Do you fall asleep in front of the tv?" Darcy asked, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Sometimes," Clint admitted. "Why?"

"That's the only way you could have seen 28 Weeks Later," Darcy replied. "You are scared to death of horror movies."

"I am not," Clint said defensively.

"Clint, you cover your eyes for Jurassic Park."

"Those velociraptors are terrifying."

"The original Jurassic Park, Barton!" she declared, disbelief clouding her tone. He opened his mouth as if to reply but she cut him off.

"Please don't let me interrupt your story about how you survived the Rage Virus," she said, waving a hand at him. He blew out a breath, glaring at her.

"We jacked an SUV in one of the hangars," he continued. "Infected chasing us all the way to the beach."

* * *

"Why do you think they keep coming after us?" Natasha asked, her shoulders coiling in tension as she maneuvered the SUV down what had probably been a footpath to the beach. Night was falling and Clint wasn't sure how she'd managed to find the path at all but he had bigger things to think about. He popped out of the sunroof, taking aim at an infected and letting the arrow fly.

"Probably instinct," he replied. "At least we know now why they're so damn fast. Fucking Neo-HYDRA and their super-soldiers."

"Barton, Romanov, we have your position, we're en route," Phil's voice came over their coms, the sound of helicopter rotors muffling the words.

"Copy, sir!" Clint replied, taking aim at the path behind them and letting another arrow fly, it exploded on impact, taking out two more infected.

"You're going to run out of arrows before we run out of guys to shoot," Natasha said, her shoulders tight as she expertly maneuvered the Jeep down the path that was quickly disappearing in the gathering darkness of evening.

"I might have an idea but it's a really bad one," Clint said, warily, letting off another explosive shot. "Before we left, R&D gave me something to field test."

"No," She said. the word sharp, "Whatever it is, no."

"They developed an LRAD transmitter," He continued as if he hadn't heard her. "One they could squash down to fit in an arrowhead. They thought we might need it for broadcasting evac instructions or crowd control."

"Oh shit," Natasha said, resigned as another explosive arrow took out more of their infected pursuers.

"They showed me how to adjust the decibel settings," he added, taking another shot. Trees along the track behind them burst into flames, chasing light and shadow across his features.

"And you want to what?" Natasha growled. "cripple them with sound waves?"

"Well I wasn't going to play Ride of the Valkyries," he replied. "How much beach have we got?"

"About two miles," she answered with a sigh.

"Okay, as soon as you make the beach, punch it," he ordered, adjusting his quiver settings. "I have to put it on a timer, we need to be as far out from it as we can get before the timer goes off." She nodded curtly and Clint drew another explosive arrow, letting it fly. The whole forrest was on fire now, forms running through the flames toward them. At least thirty or more.

The jeep cleared the tree line and Natasha swerved hard to the right, her foot stamping hard on the gas as the Jeep bounced over the dunes, following the shore. Infected poured out of the woods, scrambling down the beach faster than anything on two feet had a right to move and Clint drew his bow back, letting the LRAD arrow fly. It wedged in the sand and in that same moment he heard Natasha scream a warning.

An infected, she looked like a girl, leaped from the trees onto the hood of the Jeep, reaching though the busted windshield toward Natasha, Clint drew another arrow but even before he could fit it to the string Natasha let off a shot. The girl's hand scrabbled for purchase, closing around the steering wheel and as the weight of her body slid off the hood the Jeep jerked to the side, crashing into the rocks along the shore.

He could hear himself scream Natasha's name, could hear the snarls of the infected coming closer as he leaped into the front seat, grabbing Natasha, wrapping his arm around her ears to shield them. He even heard the distant sound of chopper rotors as he half covered his own head with his free arm. The LRAD went off and that was the last thing he heard.

* * *

"Obviously Coulson got you out," Darcy said her eyed white around the edges.

"Obviously," Clint nodded. "I felt it hit. I don't remember anything after that until I woke up in SHIELD medical three days later.

* * *

"Clint?"

The sound was muffled, far away as if he were hearing Phil's voice through a half dozen blankets a broken com and a set of ear plugs. Coulson's expression was a pinched frown but Clint was very carefully not looking at him. He reached for the wire bound notebook he'd conned out of one of the nurses, uncapping the cheap ballpoint stuffed in its spiral bindings

How's Tasha?

He held the notebook up, fixing a frown on his face and focusing his gaze on Coulson's lips

"She's fine," Phil replied, his expression softening. "She's just fine, Clint. She's got some vertigo but she's healing fast. She's going to be okay." Clint gave a firm nod, laying aside the notebook and turning his head to look out the window. He was glad he was in the Hawaii offices, SHIELD's facility here was lush and green, a tropical garden shading the hospital courtyard.

He'd woken up half a dozen times since he'd arrived but this morning was the first time he'd managed to stay awake. Coulson had been there the first three or four times, it was still hazy in his memory. Coulson was always there when he woke up in Medical unless Coulson was in worse shape than he was. It had taken him an embarrassing amount of time to realize the bandages around his head weren't the reason he couldn't hear.

"Clint?" Phil's brow creased in a frown and Clint turned his head farther, trying not to see, pressing what was left of his good ear into the pillow. He could barely hear out of his left ear at all, the ear he hadn't been able to cover at all when the LRAD went off. What he could hear was more like noise than sound. He tried not to look at Phil's lips, tried not let himself struggle to make sense of the words. "Clint, I know you can hear me a little, I know you can talk. It's a struggle right now, but it's fine, we'll get through this. Whatever you need me to do, just, talk to me, Barton." Clint scowled, reaching over and grabbing the notebook again, scribbling across the page.

What do you want me to say?

Phil dragged a hand down his face and Clint tossed the notebook aside again, staring out the window once more. This was the end of his career. He wasn't afraid of being cut loose, not like he had that first year. He'd learned enough by now, done enough for SHIELD in the time since to know they'd retire him somewhere nice, maybe offer him a desk job. The thought made bile rise in the back of his throat and he mentally started to break down his favorite sniper rifle to avoid thinking about it. The only good thing about any of this was that at least he didn't have to listen to Phil tell him it was over.

"Clint," Phil's tone was pleading and Clint turned a harsh glare on him.

"I'm not going to heal!" he snapped back, the words were too loud, he could tell by the way Phil gave a minute flinch and he snapped his jaw shut, looking away again. Too loud, too muddled. He'd caught himself, he could barely hear but he could hear enough to tell he was making a hash of his pronunciation when he didn't concentrate on every word. Phil's hand settled on his shoulder in a firm grip, kneading the tense muscles under his hand and Clint sucked in a breath, fighting down panic and tears. He didn't have space for either in his new muffled, isolated world.

Phil reached out with his other hand, grasping hold of Clint's left wrist and raising his hand from the bed, pressing Clint's fingertips to his throat. Clint turned his head back to stare up at him, wide eyed, but Phil's gaze was completely calm, openly trusting, blithely unconcerned about the deadly weapon wrapped around his windpipe.

"Your friends in R&D called in all their favors with every medical contractor we have," Phil said patiently, clearly. The same tone he used when a mission had gone off the rails. Clint could feel it in the tips of his fingers. "They've put together a solution. The director's already approved it, you can return to the field if it works, but it's highly experimental and you're not cleared to be briefed on it. The risks are minimal and the chance of success is very, very high. Clint, I need you to take my word and agree to this. I know I'm asking a lot, I know that, but I need you to trust me. Can you do that?" Clint stared back at him for a long moment before slowly nodding.

"You'll agree?" Phil repeated. Clint nodded again but no more surely and no more hopeful than before.

"It's going to be okay," Phil promised. "I swear, it's going to be okay."

* * *

"You let them operate on you without knowing what they were going to do?" Darcy asked, her face a mask of disbelief.

"Yep," Clint nodded slowly. Darcy blew out a breath.

"I guess it worked," she said. He only grinned in reply. "I could never do that."

"I trusted Phil," Clint said with a shrug. "and after the zombie apocalypse lots of things are less scary."

* * *

There's only two types of guys out there,  
Ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared  
So baby I hope that you came prepared  
I run a tight ship so, beware  
I'm like the ringleader  
I call the shots  
I'm like a firecracker  
I make it hot

Lukasz Gottwald, Claude Kelly, and Benjamin Levin - Circus


	6. Chased down all my demons, I've seen you

**Chased down all my demons, I've seen you do the same**

"So they just sci-fied your ears and tossed you back in the field?" Darcy asked with a curious frown, poking idly at her bubble tea.

"Well, not exactly," Clint shrugged as he folded his paper receipt into an origami frog. "I was out of the field a couple of months for the initial treatment. I was supposed to be out for four months because they had to fit me with these hearing aid looking things to recalibrate my ears but then Phil went and got himself arrested in Minneapolis and Fury didn't have anyone to send in to clean things up. So he pulled me off of medical leave and sent me and Natasha to post bail."

"How in the hell did Phil end up arrested?" she demanded.

"It happens more often than you'd think," he replied, releasing the frog so that it hopped over his spoon. "At least it was Minnesota. I've been arrested in some places where just being American is a capital offense. Phil was doing some leg work investigating some kidnappings and he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got fingered as a suspect."

* * *

"You know what I think 'Agent' Coulson?" The words were said with the most condescending sneer that Phil had ever heard, and that was saying something considering that Phil was personally acquainted with both Hawkeye and the Black Widow.

"I'm sure it's a fascinating theory," Phil replied blankly, looking up at the campus police officer looming over him with his most disaffected expression. The officer's lips pulled back in a grimace of disgust.

"I think you think that I'm stupid enough to believe your brainless story about being a federal agent," he said with a scowl. "Let me assure you, I'm not at all fooled by your fake badge and your agency no one has ever heard of and when I get to the bottom of this, you're going to wish you'd never seen me."

"I can assure you, that moment is already here," Phil replied, trying not to let his weariness with the situation bleed into his tone. He'd missed his check-in two hours back. Nick was probably scrambling backup to come look for him. The Officer hadn't introduced himself, hadn't given Phil his phone call and, as far as Phil knew, hadn't called in to verify his credentials. He probably had another three or four hours of this nonsense. Meanwhile the trail was going cold, if Phil hadn't already determined that the officer was too stupid to pull it off, he would have assumed the man was involved in the coverup.

There was a sharp rap on the door and the officer straightened, startled as he turned away. Phil stifled a groan, if he were an actual threat that would have been all the distraction he needed to snap the officer's neck.

"I've been calling for half an hour, Derringer," the woman in the doorway said, her reading glasses perched on the point of her delicately pert nose. She was petite, her brown hair carefully set in a french knot and her gray suit impeccable. Phil felt his shoulders straighten without conscious thought and then just as rapidly sag in relief as Romanov and Barton followed the woman into the room.

"I'm conducting an interrogation, Marla," the officer, Derringer replied with a mean scowl. "Who are these people?"

"Agent Romanov and Agent Barton are here because Agent Coulson went missing earlier today," The woman replied, eyeing him as Phil stood to his feet, straightening his tie.

"Oh look we found him," Clint declared, a fake cheerfulness in his expression. He'd folded his arms over his chest in a way that made his biceps bulge, straining the sleeves of his lavender t-shirt that read 'I don't wear Bows, I shoot them' in bright pink glitter. It clashed spectacularly with the pair of purple hearing receivers on his ears. It wasn't a look that screamed federal agent and apparently Derringer thought so as well, based on his look of disgust. Beside him Natasha was watching Derringer as if she were deciding how best to cook and eat him.

"Forgive me, Agent Coulson, I'm Dr. Engman," Marla Engman held out her hand to Phil with a professional smile. "I was the one who contacted your offices for assistance. I'm sorry I wasn't available to speak to you earlier."

"The Regents can't just march in here in the middle of my investigation and-" Derringer sputtered but Engman cut him off.

"The Regents can," she replied. "And we have. Four girls have gone missing Officer Derringer, under very unusual circumstances I might add. Agent Coulson is here to get to the bottom of things… before parents start turning up to withdraw their children from the university."

"Tasha freaked out when you didn't answer your text messages," Clint said, pointing at Natasha whose unblinking stare at Derringer was starting to make Phil uneasy. At the moment she didn't look like she'd ever been freaked out in her life and Derringer for once seemed to be exercising the better part of valor based on the way he was subconsciously edging away from her.

"It's nice to know my predictability has its uses," Phil replied drily as he adjusted his cufflinks.

"I'd like to discuss the situation with you and your team," Engman turned to usher them out the door.

"I don't want these people trampling though my investigation, Marla," Derringer snapped as Phil herded Hawkeye and the Black Widow out into the hall.

"I really don't care what you want, Morris," Engman replied.

"What I want to discuss," Phil said, eying Clint with a disapproving frown, "Is why my team is here in the field while they're supposed to be on leave."

"It's cool, I got a note from mom," Clint replied, giving him a thumbs up. Natasha bit back a sigh.

"Fury didn't have anyone else to send and he wouldn't let me come alone," she replied. Phil made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, throwing a glance over his shoulder at where Engman and Derringer were still needling each other.

"I am incredibly grateful that the two of you came all the way out here to straighten this out," Phil said, running his palm down his tie.

"Oh for godsake," Clint huffed under his breath, rolling his eyes. At least he'd likely intended it to be under his breath, he was still having a hard time accurately regulating his volume.

"But the situation has been handled," Phil pressed on as if he hadn't heard. "And at this point it would probably be better if the both of you went back-"

"Fury said we weren't allowed to come back without you," Natasha interrupted. Phil shot her a glare, his jaw ticking in frustration.

"It's Minneapolis, Phil, not Juarez!" Clint was putting on his best unruffled face but by now Phil could tell that beneath that he was nearly vibrating with the excitement of being back in the field. Phil let out a huff of a sigh. Clint hadn't used his first name in a professional setting since Natasha had joined the team. If he was breaking protocol now it was to make a point.

"Do not get killed," Phil hissed at him. "Or I swear I will have you resurrected so you can handle the paperwork yourself and then I'll kill you with my own hands."

"I told you I was his favorite," Clint said, smugly. Natasha, to her credit, didn't reply.

"God, I need a drink," Phil muttered, clenching his jaw as he rubbed his eyes.

* * *

"We interviewed the roommates of all the missing girls," Clint said, leaning back in the coffee shop booth and stretching his shoulders. "Looked through all their academic records but we couldn't find anything to tie them together. Two of the girls had gone missing walking across campus, one at night and one in the early morning. One went into the library and never came out, the fourth disappeared from her dorm room with no sign of forced entry."

"My god," Darcy gave him a horrified look and he nodded in agreement.

"More or less. We were at a dead end," he continued, lining the origami frog up with the artificial sweetener dispenser he'd emptied onto the table. "So we went to the local off campus watering hole to brainstorm some fresh leads."

* * *

"Why do you keep calling the director 'mom'?" Natasha asked, taking a sip of her beer as she gave Clint a calculating look. Phil winced, glancing out over the crowded bar at the morass of customers who looked overall to be of dubiously legal drinking age.

"Long story," Clint replied evasively, fiddling with his hearing receivers.

"Background noise?" Phil asked with a frown.

"R&D says my brain'll get used to it eventually," Clint replied with a frustrated huff. "They don't want to fit me for the final version until then. These things are just damn uncomfortable. And don't say it!" He stabbed a finger in Phil's direction and Coulson's mouth snapped shut on his next words.

"Can we focus on the task at hand, please?" Natasha asked, leafing through the academic files of the victims.

"At this point I think the only thing we have is to retrace their individual steps tomorrow and see if we can't dig something up," Clint sighed, nursing his beer as he stared down at the files.

"Are… are you guys SHIELD?" Clint barely turned his head, glancing up and out of the corner of his eye at the girl hovering over their table. She was clutching a bright teal three ring binder to her chest, her eyes wide with the delight of the very young. Natasha shifted in her seat and Phil went rigid but he needn't have worried. A slow half smile curled at Natasha's lips as the girl turned to her with starry eyes. "You look like SHIELD."

"You know about SHIELD?" Natasha asked, keeping her body language loose and relaxed as Clint buried his face in his beer mug.

"I'm doing my senior thesis on SHIELD," she replied, rocking on her toes excitedly. "I'm majoring in criminal justice. Oh, Chantal, Chantal Benning. Did the administration call you in because those students went missing?"

"She's good," Natasha observed, giving Phil an amused smile. Phil didn't appear to be nearly so entertained, and Clint, who was still watching her out of the corner of his eye like a viper about to strike, couldn't say he disagreed.

"I've been tracking the evidence," Chantal said, smacking the binder down on the table between them and scrambling through the pages. "There's not much."

"There's not anything," Phil said drily.

"Well, yeah," Chantal nodded. "Is that normal for you guys? Seems like it would be normal for the agency that deals with all the really weird crap. There's nothing that ties all four victims together except Russian Literature."

"Excuse me?" Clint asked, looking up at her.

"My roommate, Molly, she's Lib Arts, I don't know what she's thinking. But anyway, she was in Russian Lit last semester with Lindsey," Chantal continued on feverishly. "Hope was in their study group, she was in the night class. And Megan was Monday, Wednesday, Friday this semester and Isabelle was Tuesday and Thursday. I've been poking around, trying to go over their regular paths to and from the dorms, look for clues, I wasn't too worried because I don't fit the profile so far, but the white girls are freaking the hell right out."

Clint blinked three times into the middle distance before reaching up and adjusting the settings on his hearing receivers again and turning to face her properly.

"Say that again?" he said slowly, deliberately as his eyes narrowed at her.

"Dude if you were a white girl you'd be freaking out too," Chantal observed.

"When he does freak out it's exactly like a white girl," Natasha nodded in agreement, her calculating expression focused like a laser on Chantal's binder.

"Russian Literature," Phil prompted, standing to his feet and pulling out his money clip, dropping several bills on the table. "Who's the professor?"

"Horne?" Chantal replied in confusion as they all stood.

"He doesn't, by chance, have a class tonight, does he?" Phil asked, helping Clint and Natasha hastily gather up their files.

"Don't think so," Chantal said, looking even more bewildered. "But Molly almost failed Russian Lit and if he still has the same office hours you might catch him."

"Romanov, call it in, I need a background on Horne," Phil ordered sharply as Clint gulped down the last of his beer. Natasha gave Chantal a pat on the shoulder before edging around her and quick marching toward the door, Phil practically on her heels as he called over his shoulder. "Barton I need to know where he's been."

"On it!" Clint replied, throwing back Phil's nearly empty beer with one hand and hoisting a pile of file folders in the other.

"Do you guys know your way around campus?" Chantal asked as Clint shrugged reaching for Natasha's drink as well.

"Go back to your dorm room," Clint said, slapping down Natasha's empty mug and sweeping Chantal's binder off the table, pressing it into her arms. "Tell your roommate and anyone else you know who's taken Russian Lit not to go out alone."

* * *

"Russian Literature?" Darcy asked skeptically.

"I hate Russian Literature," Clint said his face scrunching up in a frown, making the origami frog hop into the artificial sweetener dispenser. "Never trust anyone who likes Russian Literature."

"Dude, your best friend is Russian," she pointed out.

"And?" Clint gave her a blank look.

"So," Darcy eyed him skeptically. "Never trust anyone who likes Russian Literature?"

"We went with our usual, Natasha took point on the mark, I covered her, Phil on backup," Clint said with a shrug. "Shouldn't have been a problem, we'd done it a hundred times. I still don't really know what happened but less than a minute in he knew he'd been made and from there everything went to hell. You've seen Tasha fight."

"Occasionally, when she moves slow enough for the human eye to see her," Darcy replied, rolling her eyes sarcastically. Clint nodded in agreement.

"Right up until that moment," he said. "I hadn't."

* * *

"Coulson?" Clint's hands held his bow with a white knuckled grip as he let his eyes flick for barely a moment to where Phil was sprawled in the grass. Coulson shook his head as if throwing off water, blinking rapidly as he hauled himself to his feet. "What the hell was that?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Coulson rubbed at the knot forming on his head. Clint's attention had already returned to the man dangling from a nearby tree, the grappling line wrapped around one arm suspending him over the ground. He glared coldly back at them in a way that made Clint's hair stand on end.

"Bolero Arrow," Clint replied. He'd so been looking forward to saying that but the moment seemed spoiled somehow.

"We need to call in backup," Natasha said, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth where Horne had punched her. Natasha had barely held her own against the grey haired academic and it had taken Clint more than a full two minutes to get a clear shot, the pair of them moving so fast he could barely track them. In the end, Phil's distraction had been the only thing that had kept Natasha from getting her neck snapped. Horne's eyes narrowed in contempt, seemingly unbothered by the suspension line that should have broken his clavicle when it slammed him into the tree.

"For Severus Snape here?" Clint asked, bewildered. "Yeah he rang Phil's bell pretty good and he gave you one hell of a shiner but-"

"I said I was fine," Phil insisted, though he sounded a bit bleary as he staggered up to stand between Clint and Natasha.

"Coulson, we need backup," Natasha said, her eyes never leaving Horne. Clint didn't look away from their target either but he didn't need to. He could feel the tension rolling off Natasha so thick it nearly felt like fear, her shoulders heaving with each breath.

"If you have some answers for me about the location of those missing girls, this doesn't have to go badly for you," Phil said to Horne, putting on his blandest, most professional face.

"He's not going to tell us anything," Natasha said sharply. "We need at least two backup teams here in the next hour or we can scrub this mission."

"If there were two backup teams you and I wouldn't be here," Clint pointed out, a shiver running down his spine as Horne stared at Natasha with an evil smile.

"The door to Красная Комната is once more open," He declared. Natasha didn't flinch, her expression never faltered but there was a stillness to her that Clint didn't like at all.

"Coulson?" Clint said warningly.

"Cover me, I'll cuff him," Phil answered the unspoken question, nodding carefully.

"No, kill him," Natasha said, her hand fisting in Phil's jacket, holding him back. Horne gave her a grin of fiendish delight.

"SHIELD is not in the business of-"

"Clint, _shoot _him," she said forcefully, cutting Phil off.

"Sir, I'm kind of thinking getting close to him is a bad idea," Clint admitted. Alarm bells were going off in his head. Whatever this was, it wasn't good.

"We are not going to lose our composure over one suspect with far more training than his appearance would imply," Phil insisted. In one swift motion Natasha drew her gun, leveling it at Horne's head. "Agent, stand down!"

"What the hell is going on here!"

"Oh shit," Clint huffed under his breath as Campus police chief Derringer stomped angrily across the quad toward them.

"Officer Derringer, we have a situation here," Phil replied smoothly, squaring his shoulders as Derringer stalked toward them. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep your distance while we take this suspect into custody."

"You're going to arrest a tenured professor for kidnapping?" Derringer demanded, his pace never slowing. "Are you deranged?!" Clint swore under his breath.

"Stay back asshole!" he ordered as Natasha drew her second pistol.

"I won't be bullied by a bunch of incompetents!" Derringer replied, fuming. "The regents will-"

"Stay back!" Clint shouted over top of him but it did no good. It all happened so fast there was no time to react. Derringer drew level with the tree, just barely within reach and Horne twisted, grasping Derringer with his legs and slamming him into the trunk, using Derringer's body as leverage to push himself up. The tie line went slack and Horne twisted free of it, landing on the ground with a roundhouse kick that caught Clint in the jaw, sending him slamming into Phil. Natasha's gun went off and Clint had one horrified moment to watch as Horne darted out of the line of fire, his hand punching Natasha full in the chest and sending her flying to land against the trunk of a nearby tree with a horrifying thud.

"Barton!" Phil barked as Clint scrambled to his feet, sweeping up his bow, his boots losing traction on the dew grass and giving Horne just enough of a lead to disappear in the tree line on the edge of campus.

"I'm on him!" Clint replied, "Get Tasha!"

"Don't get killed!" Phil snapped. Clint ran for all he was worth, apprehension twisting at his stomach as he crashed into the forest after Horne. He leaped over a fence, his feet pounding the ground in the near darkness at a pace that was blinding but not nearly fast enough to keep up with the aging academic. He should have been able to hear Horne, two months ago he probably could have tracked the man on sound alone but the noises of the forest, the wind in the trees, echoed in his still healing ears leaving him disoriented.

He ran between the darkened trees, his feet catching over bramble and branch, his harsh pants echoing in his receivers and drowning out everything but the rattle of air in his own lungs.

The shrill siren sound broke over him like a squall and he stumbled to his knees on the forest floor, clutching at his head as his skull erupted in pain. He scrabbled at his hearing receivers, struggling to pry them from his ears but the sound only swelled and the darkness closed in on him.

* * *

"Was Natasha okay?" Darcy asked, wide eyed.

"Lucky for us Benning had been tailing us," Clint said with a smirk. "Probably for her paper. She boosted Derringer's golf cart and drove Natasha and Phil to campus medical."

"Oh, I bet Derringer was pissed,"

"You have no idea. Phil and Nat got themselves patched up and headed out to look for me when I didn't answer my radio. Phil found me. Natasha found Derringer with a bunch of his stupid friends and a chip on his shoulder."

* * *

Natasha's fist connected with Derringer's nose with a crack, that sent him sprawling to the ground unconscious with the rest of his miscreant team of volunteer searchers. She rounded on the last man, thick as a tree and from the look of him nearly as smart but before she could twist away from him and level a kick to his chest he went rigid, his eyes rolling back in his head as he fell to the ground like dead wood, a tranq arrow protruding from his back.

"Tasha!" Clint raced toward her, Phil on his heels as he slipped over the dewy grass in the early morning light, his hands shaking as he reached out to gently cup her face on impulse. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and it looked as if one eye was swelling shut. "What happened?" His words were too loud, he was sure of it, but she didn't flinch, she didn't flinch from his touch either, as he took the handkerchief Phil handed him, gently dabbing at the blood on her mouth to get a better look.

"I think he's irritated we took over his case," She replied, tilting her head so that Clint could see her mouth clearly. She reached up and grasped his wrist, holding him away just enough so that he could see her lips. "What happened to your ears?"

"Sonic bomb of some kind," Phil replied. "As far as I could tell from what was left of it. I've never seen a weapon like that. If he hadn't had his ears covered by the receivers it probably would have killed him. As it is they're just shorted out."

"I've got back ups with our gear, I'll be fine," Clint insisted. He wasn't sure why he was trembling or why he was fussing over Natasha, or why she was allowing it. This whole mission was throwing him off and he turned to Phil with a desperate look. "What's going on here?"

"I don't know," Phil replied. "But I don't think that's supposed to be here." He inclined his head toward the far end of the clearing at a tumbledown utility shed half obscured in the trees.

"It wasn't on the campus map," Natasha agreed, She gave Clint's arm a firm squeeze before slipping out of his grasp, moving toward the shed with cautious steps. Phil signaled him to cover them and Coulson moved forward, his deft hands making short work of the padlock on the rusty metal door.

Natasha drew her pistol and the pair of them took aim as Phil stepped back, pulling the door open with him but there was only darkness inside.

"If it's not suspicious, what is it doing here?" Clint asked, leaning in through the doorway Natasha had just entered, Phil slipping past him to shine a light into the filthy, empty space.

"Does seem like a terrible waste of an evil lair," Phil agreed with a nod. He froze almost instantly as Natasha's boots that had been making a slow circuit of the tiny structure stepped from the plywood floor onto the tarp left haphazardly in the middle, her heel landing with a hollow ring. She stepped back cautiously and Clint drew his arrow back as Phil crouched down, whisking the tarp back to reveal a metal plate in the middle of the floor.

"Yay, trap door," Clint said with his least enthusiastic sigh. Phil grasped the handle pulling it open but the only thing it revealed was a metal ladder that disappeared into the darkness below.

"I'll go first," Natasha said, holstering her pistol.

"Agent," Phil began cautiously.

"I'll go first," she repeated firmly. "Cover me." Phil handed her the flashlight as Clint moved to position himself over the opening, watching as she skittered down the ladder.

"There's a door here," she said a moment later.

"Of course there is," Phil's shoulders slumped in resignation, he motioned Clint down, following a moment later. The bottom of the chamber was barely seven feet down, and only as big as the utility shed itself. Phil drew his gun in the cramped space, reaching out to swing open the unlocked door, still there was nothing and Natasha crept silently forward. As her foot stepped onto the metal catwalk the lights came up automatically and Clint's breath caught in his throat.

Another ten feet down at the bottom of the catwalk stairs was a wide, warehouse like room, stretching out a good fifty yards. A series of cots lined one wall, their bedding carefully folded in military fashion, a single pair of handcuffs dangling from each metal headrail. Through the middle a dozen lab benches stretched the length of the room and on the far end what looked like a makeshift hospital.

"They're not here now, but they haven't been gone long," Phil observed with a tense frown, following Natasha who had descended the steps, creeping toward the center of the room.

"How did this even get here?" Clint asked, wincing as his too loud voice reverberated around the metal walls, resonating off his skin, but Coulson pretended not to notice, his attention focused on Natasha whose fingers were flying over the keys of one of the terminals. Her breath caught in her throat, the bare sound loud like a gunshot in the cavernous room.

There was a woman on the screen, long ebony hair framing her perfect features, ruby lips parted seductively. Natasha backed up from the lab bench, her shoulder colliding with Clint's. She looked first at Phil, then at Clint before staring back at the screen, everything else about her so still she might have been a statue.

"Tasha, who is that?" Clint asked, feeling his stomach knot at the fear in her eyes.

"Marya Konn," she replied. "she's… The Black Widow."

"You told me there was no one left," Clint said breathlessly, his heart beating so fiercely he could hear it in his damaged ears. "You told me you were the last."

"I told you there were four," she said, looking up at him with wide eyes.

"What were they doing here?" Phil asked, his voice holding a hint of horror as he reached for the keyboard, clicking through files. Pictures of young women, some of them the missing girls, chemical compounds, medical files, experiments all sliding by like a morbid flipbook.

"The Red Room," Natasha replied, looking even more terrified before turning to Clint. "You can't fight her, we have to get out of here, now."

"Tasha?" he asked, worriedly as a single tear slipped down her cheek.

"That's not my name," she snapped back at him, looking desperate.

"What is your name?" Phil asked, turning to her with his most gentle expression.

"I don't know," she replied.

* * *

"Seriously?" Darcy gaped at him, the fingernail of her pinky caught between her teeth.

"I really shouldn't tell you much of this," Clint admitted, rubbing his eyes. His face scrunched up in a wince as he weighed his next words. "The Red Room did a lot more than train super spies, they did, well, experiments too."

"Like super soldiers?"

Clint shrugged, she didn't seem nearly as surprised by that as he thought she should be.

"That's why Natasha's so… Natasha?" She asked.

"We should have listened to Tasha when she said we should get out," Clint said. "But we went through the files. Marya Konn had revived the old soviet super soldier program. Horne, as it turned out, was a sleeper agent turned minion slash test dummy. By the time we realized we definitely needed backup, Konn showed up. Obviously Phil and I weren't much of a match for a super soldier and Tasha'd had two head injuries in one night so she wasn't at the top of her game either. I managed to pull Phil to safety before Konn blew the self destruct but she took off with Natasha."

"What did you do?"

"We wouldn't have done much of anything if Chantal hadn't showed up in her ripped-off golf cart. She picked us up, took us back to campus, helped us break into Horne's place. We found his stash of freaky technology and directions to their main research facility along the river."

* * *

"Am I going to get arrested for stealing a big pile of experimental weapons out of a professor's apartment?" Benning asked, a wide grin on her face as the golf cart bounced over the half obscured hiking trail in the half light of early evening. She swerved to miss a rotting log and Clint swayed where he'd perched on the back of the cart, his bow trained forward into the woods. "I mean he's obviously a scary bad guy and I do not feel at all guilty about stealing his weird guns but I'm asking because my dad is not going to bail me out, he's just not. He says that if I do something stupid enough to get arrested I can sit there till I rot because I'm just feeding the stereotype and that only hurts everybody."

"You're not worried about being arrested for stealing the campus police golf cart?" Phil asked, his tone more curious than anything as he looked up from the tracker in his hand that was guiding them toward the coordinates. Clint choked on a laugh, bobbing lightly on the balls of his feet as they hit what was either a pot hole or a opossum.

"Derringer's had his golf cart stolen like, 8 times this semester so far," Chantal replied, the wheels of the cart skidding in the loamy earth as she rounded a bend in the path. "He's never noticed. I mean, he noticed once last semester but that was because it ended up in the river and that is hard to miss." Phil shook his head, stifling a snicker.

"We're almost there," he said instead. Chantal skidded to a stop without being told, clambering out of the golf cart as Clint leaped down off of the plastic totes piled in the back, prying the nearest one open.

"So like, can I call one of you for bail?" she asked as Phil unloaded another of the plastic totes, squirreling away a plethora of strange looking side arms and hefting a massive, glowing gatling gun. "because I feel like I'm at least entitled to bail. And like an interview for my paper."

"This is as far as you go kid, Clint said, settling what looked like a rocket launcher on his shoulder and reaching into the last tote in the back of the golf cart. "But here, take this. Find a place to hide, shoot anything that moves." Chantal looked down at the acid green shotgun he dropped into her hands with bright eyes, a grin spreading over her face.

"Wow!"

* * *

"Clint" Darcy sighed, shaking her head. "Is this Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?" He stared back at her for a long moment.

"You've _seen _Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?"

"It's not that bad," she replied with a hint of defensiveness. "People get all weirded out over it because they try to stuff it in a Historical Fantasy box when really it's an Alternate Universe." A considering look furrowed his brow, his eyes shifting as he gazed blankly into the middle distance.

"Huh, okay you're right," he said finally.

"Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?" Darcy gave him a scowl.

"Do you want to hear this story or not?" Clint demanded, glaring back at her. Darcy rolled her eyes but she didn't reply.

"Turns out we were under informed about the situation," he continued, ignoring her disapproving glare. "They had the four girls who had gone missing and better than half a dozen more, some of them off the streets, you know the kind, the ones no one will notice missing. Marya had decided that the easiest way to give her program a boost would be to drain Natasha's blood and use it to reproduce the Red Room's serum. We barely showed up in time."

* * *

Clint lobbed two grenades into the center of the converted warehouse, ducking behind a lab bench as the automated security systems fired on him. There weren't more than two dozen actual Red Room agents, counting the lab technicians but they were putting up one hell of a fight.

"This is going well," he observed, rolling onto his back and taking out one of the automated turrets. Green laser bolts, peppered the floor, slicing through some of the technicians and he chanced a glance up at Phil's position in the rafters of the warehouse.

"Just keep them in toward the center and away from Natasha and the girls," Phil replied in his com, his tone sharp. Clint rolled out from cover, drawing one of the stolen laser pistols and taking aim at Horne, the shot clipping his shoulder and sending the academic crashing into a computer bank.

"These things aren't super consistent in their trajectory," Clint said, making a dive behind a massive computer terminal.

"They're called experimental for a reason," Coulson agreed, huffing out a swear under his breath as the rain of laser fire abruptly stopped.

"Clint!" Natasha let out a shout. Somehow she already had one hand and her feet free and she kicked out, striking one of the grunts in the face before upending the lab table she'd been chained to and diving behind it. Clint followed her gaze, tracking where Marya Konn was making a dash over the equipment, scaling it in leaps and bounds up into the rafters toward Phil.

Clint took the shot, the laser blast knocking Konn's feet out from under her and sending her slamming into the ground.

"Lousy Soviet substandard construction." Coulson's voice was muttering through his hearing receivers. "It's just like the Groza. Who made this thing? Baryshev?"

Natasha vaulted up from behind the table, one chain still dangling from her wrist as Marya scrambled to her feet, taking off at a run for the door.

"Get the girls!" Natasha snapped, heading after her, her feet tearing up the floor.

"Tasha!" Clint ducked out of the path of one of the agents, letting off another round of fire just as Phil's gatling gun re-engaged, taking out the man.

"Go after her!" Phil shouted as Clint shot one of the last agents standing, the rest seemed to be scattering as well, no longer willing to risk their own necks if Konn was on the run. "I'll get the kids, don't let her get herself killed!"

Clint bolted for the door, the sounds of laser fire still echoing in his receivers as he charged out into the gathering night, hot on Natasha's trail. He bolted into the trees, following a sound that wasn't unlike an elephant moving through the underbrush. He'd grown up in the circus, he'd had prior with that. Natasha could move so silently you'd never hear her until it was too late but she was making no such effort now, rage driving her forward. He poured on every ounce of speed he could manage, the air searing his lungs with the effort. He couldn't catch them, he knew that, and if he didn't he wasn't at all sure which Black Widow was going to come out of this fight alive. He felt more than heard the whine of an electrical charge that sent the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. The sound of the shot was like a bomb going off, rattling the ground under his feet and he stumbled, swearing in panic as he staggered into the clearing ahead.

Natasha was standing only a few yards in front of him, her back to him and shoulders heaving with every breath, a body crumpled at her feet. Across the clearing Chantal Benning was sprawled in the grass where the percussive force of her gun had sent her back on her ass, skidding through the grass, the gently smoking experimental weapon still clutched in both white knuckled hands.

"I… I shot her," Chantal said, looking wide eyed. Clint shambled closer, gasping in each breath as he gave Natasha a rough pat on the back. She stood unmoving like a statue as if she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing, her own hands trembling with adrenaline, manacles still dangling from one wrist. He looked down at the body, kicking it over with his foot to find a sizable hole burned in the middle of Marya's head.

"Oh god," Chantal choked out.

"You gonna throw up kid?" Clint asked curiously. Chantal nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Konn.

"Good," he replied, crumpling to the grass, clutching the stitch in his side. "Me too."

* * *

"Wait, wait," Darcy waved her hands at him. "Are we talking about Agent Benning director of field containment?"

"Yeah that's Chantal."

"Holy shit she is so metal!" Darcy's eyes were wide like saucers as she stared back at him. "She was in Greenwich. She just walked right up in her Alexander McQueen suit and stared at half a dark elf oozing all over a Volkswagen and said: that's going to be a bitch to get out of the upholstery."

"Yeah, she's Chuck Noris," Clint nodded in agreement as he tried to shoot the origami frog out of the palm of his hand.

"She shot the other Black Widow?"

"Oh," Clint made a face as the frog plinked off the glass of the window, hitting right in the middle of the O in 'Coffee'. "Don't tell anyone I told you that."

"Not even Benning?"

"Especially not Benning," he replied, looking pained. "You have no idea what we had to do to get her to stay on with SHIELD after the Hydra thing."

"Was one of the things promising never to bring up the fact that she threw up on her first non-mission when she was a baby badass?" Darcy asked with an evil grin.

"Among other things," he said, rubbing his face with his hands. Darcy studied him carefully for a long moment.

"Tony says you're a certified genius," she observed, her eyes narrowed.

"That's what it says on my paperwork," he nodded in reply.

"How are you so dumb?"

"It's a math thing," Clint replied with a shrug, swallowing the dregs of his coffee. "There's equations for it and everything but we don't have enough napkins for me to show you."


End file.
